Adam Faulkner's Afterlife
by SALJStella
Summary: Sequel to The First, The One, The Only. Lawrence was the first one that Adam could love. But much to Adam's surprise, he wasn't the only. AdamOC. But it's still sweet slash!
1. A Night Like Any Other

**A/N: God, ****I can't believe I'm doing this… But I actually **_**will **_**step away from my AdamLawrence-obsession and write an AdamOC-fic! But don't worry, the affection Adam feels for Lawrence that we all know is there shines through most of his actions. **

**Prologue: A Night Like Any Other**

Adam will never remember this.

This moment.

He will never remember it.

It's happened too many times before. You don't remember what happens every night, what happens every fucking night and especially the one night every week when you actually get to sleep.

That's why he'll never remember how Lawrence limps into his bedroom. All his balance rests on his one foot and makes him falter with every step. He'll never remember Lawrence's face, all white, so deadly and white, like an extra moon in the darkness. Why the hell would he put out the light before he went to bed? He knows he's afraid of the dark now!

Adam will never remember Lawrence's eyes, clear, sharp and blue, as he sits down on the edge of Adam's bed and takes his hand that lays on the covers, strokes it with his thumb in a way that's supposed to be comforting, but that really just spreads his cold and his death into Adam.

It really doesn't matter. These dreams are awful, but they're still Adam's favorites. Because there's no way in hell he'd rather dream of what really happened, about that worst day of his life, about that day when the paramedics carried him away from Lawrence's body and said that dreadful mantra, over and over: _He is dead. He is dead. He is dead. _

But Lawrence isn't dead. He's sitting right here. Fills Adam with cold and with reassurance, and Adam doesn't even notice that the tears are streaming down his face as Lawrence slowly opens the mouth that's just a gaping, black hole.

"I have to go now, Adam…"

"No…"

It comes out as a whimper, but Adam doesn't know what else to do. He knows better than to reach out and try to grab Lawrence. He doesn't have these dreams a lot, life isn't that kind to him and it never has been, so he rarely has these dreams were Lawrence actually is here with him, touches him, speaks with him, but the times he's had them have taught him that when Lawrence says this, he really has to go, then there's nothing Adam can say or do to hold him back.

"I have to go now, Adam…"

"No… Stay with me…"

"I have to go…"

"No…"

And Lawrence doesn't really go. But he disappears, fades away into the air that's heavy with cigarette smoke, and once again leaves Adam alone, all alone, so overwhelmingly, terribly torn apart and alone.

Just like all the other nights.


	2. A Light In The Darkness

**A/N: WAH! Who would ever think it'd be so much fun writing something where my darling Lawrence is dead? Well, I guess it's because I still get to write about my favorite little angst-bitch Adam… **_**And **_**you reviewers, too, of course! **

**1: A Light In The Darkness**

**Disclaimer: Yup, I own Saw, and I'm married to Adam! (Not.)**

Adam can't remember the last time he wanted to wake up when he fell asleep the night before.

Hell, he can't even remember the last time he thought he'd even be _able _to wake up when he fell asleep the night before.

Because what he thinks every time he falls asleep, rolled up into a ball, and sleep devours him, not slowly and peacefully, no, but like a big, merciless sack that's pushed down over his head, like a kidnapping, blinds him, immobilizes him, smothers him, is:

_I'm dying. _

_I have to die now. _

_Nothing can feel this bad without being death. _

But he never dies. That's the problem. If nature had followed its laws and killed whoever was weakest, he would've died, and everything had been so much easier. Everything had been better, since no one would miss him. But he lived.

He, the weakest one, lived.

And he left the strongest one, the smartest one, the best one, _the only one of the two of them that fucking deserved to survive, _behind.

So Adam wakes up this day, too. He lifts his head from the pillow and rubs his forehead for a few seconds before he fumbles after the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand.

He sits up without bothering to straighten up. His back is bent, it looks like a big C, his pale and he hasn't shaved in a week, since that's how long it's been since he left the apartment, and by this, he has no reason to freshen up. All in all, he looks like shit.

Ah. Who cares. As he said, he has no reason to look different. No one's around to judge him, and even if there was, people have stopped doing that, anyway. Maybe the past twenty-seven years have taught them that they shouldn't expect anything from him in the first place.

Adam draws a gratifying puff from the cigarette. Feels how the smoke fills his brain, relieved.

_Well, Lawrence, _he says in his mind. _This is it. This is what you died for. _

_You died for an unemployed photographer. A photographer that actually _has _talent, believe it or not, but that's such a damn coward that he doesn't even manages to look for a job. _

_This is it. And it's not much, is it?_

_If you'd seen me now, you'd wished you shot me to begin with, right?_

It's not really that bad. Since he got out of the bathroom, he smokes more, he drinks more, the few times he has the guts to leave the apartment, he usually stops in some alley and buys a pill for the little money he's got, sure.

And he's afraid of the dark. And every time he goes to the bathroom, he can see it.

Blood.

Tears.

Darkness.

Screams.

Lawrence's screams. Lawrence's blood.

Lawrence's hand, swaying back and forth, holding that gun.

Yes. When he's in the bathroom, Adam just has to squint to see a heart on the toilet, see the tiles get stained with grime and blood and obscurity, feel the hot, white pain in his shoulder, hear Lawrence roar, beg, crawl for that fucking creep that forced them through all that.

"_There! I've done it! Now show them to me!"_

Okay. That's tough. Sure. And he misses Lawrence, by _God, _he misses him, but it doesn't hurt much anymore. It hurts at night. So dreadfully much.

At night, he screams and cries and writhers in his bed until the sheets almost strangle him and he slides into an anxious sleep. Then it hurts. But only for a while.

It hurts for a while at night. And at daytime, he's empty. He doesn't feel anything.

But now…

Maybe it's just that thought, or it's because of the usual head-rush Adam gets after that first cigarette every morning, but either way, an old memory gets triggered in his mind, a memory he's so desperately tried to forget, for this very reason.

When he thinks about it, it hurts.

And it's not nighttime yet.

"_Mr. Faulkner, I'd like to talk to you."_

"_Get out."_

"_No. I won't. I wouldn't even if I…"_

"_Get out."_

_Adam doesn't want to talk. He doesn't want to sleep. He doesn't want to swallow the pills the nurses have tried to give him for the pain in his shoulder. _

_Because every ounce of pain he can feel is pain he deserves. And it's still not enough, it'll still never be enough to make him and Lawrence even. _

_Adam will try to be in pain for the rest of his life._

_And he doesn't want to talk to the cop that's sitting next to his bed with a notepad in his hand. He's seen him before, he was sitting next to Adam in the ambulance, talking to the nurses. And he probably wants Adam to talk, tell him all the juicy details about the pain, the blood, the screams, so that he can get Jigsaw and get another medal to put on his fancy uniform jacket. But Adam won't talk, and he's laying with his back facing those kind, understanding eyes. _

"_You don't even know what I want to ask."_

"_I know _exactly _what you want to ask!" Adam hisses."You want all the yummy details about the bathroom. You want to know how much I know about Jigsaw and how much pain Lawrence seemed to be in when he sawed off his foot," Adam continues, very picky about putting as much rudeness and sarcasm into his tone as possible. "But I'm not really in the mood, okay?"_

"_I know you're not, Adam," the cop says softly, and he doesn't sound like Adam's voice has affected him at all. "And I already know everything that happened in the bathroom. Doctor Gordon's foot at the entrance told us a lot."_

_Adam still doesn't turn around. And that almost makes him hate himself even more. _

_Because if the cop saw his face now, he would've left in a heartbeat. He's sure of that. _

"_You don't know _shit _about what happened in there," he says with pressure on every syllable. _

_And that's true. _

_The cop will never know what happened in there. Not even if he'd been in Jigsaw's place and looked at the whole thing through a camera. Not even if he'd been sitting with his foot in a goddamn chain with Adam and Lawrence._

_Adam got a friend in that room. _

_He fell in love. For the first time in his life, he was purely, plainly in love. _

_So in love that he dared to depend on someone. _

_So in love that he could forget about everything else. Even the bathroom, Zep's smashed face, the pain in his shoulder. All of that went away, everything that was left was Lawrence's wide, crazy, blue eyes, his cold hand on Adam's cheek, his words: "You're just wounded in the shoulder…"_

_And there's no way, _no way _that the cop can know that. _

"_No," the cop says from behind him, like he's read Adam's mind. "I probably don't. I guess you can't imagine that, no matter how much you've seen before. Okay, I'll rephrase the question: _How are you _after what happened in the bathroom?"_

_Adam scoffs. The cop doesn't care how he feels, Adam knows that, and the cop does, too, because no one's cared about Adam before and no one will in the future, and he sees no reason that would change just because he's got a bandage over his shoulder and a big, aching hole in his chest. _

_Adam can't cry anymore, though. _

_The tears started streaming down his face when he saw Lawrence, and they kept going until he came to the hospital. But they've stopped. Finally. _

_He's drained of tears._

_But the weird thing is, he's more full of words than he's even been before, when he's lived his life in silent hatred. And suddenly, he can't keep them bottled up anymore, they're pouring out of his mouth, even though he's still talking to his own hand. _

"_How the fuck do you want me to answer that?" Adam almost yells. "You want me to say that I'm fine? In that case, I have to disappoint you, officer. Because I'm _not _fine, I'm _fucking crappy, _I have a damn bullet in my shoulder and a whole bunch of fucking nurses going up my ass about all their pills that don't fix anything, anyway, not to mention all these cops that want to know as much as possible about what happened to me and…"_

_And there, he stops like someone has switched off a radio. _

_Adam can't say Lawrence's name. _

_Lawrence is sacred. Adam won't say his name, he'll settle for thinking it, day after day, for the rest of his life. _

"_It's what happened to doctor Gordon that shakes you up the most, isn't it?" The cop asks gently. _

_Adam doesn't answer. The cop's touching a very soar spot, and red, hot blood is pulsing from it, fills him from the feet up, makes his soul all black. _

_It hurts. _

_It hurts so bad. _

_Adam can almost feel the cop's hesitation before he puts his hand on his shoulder. And he doesn't have the energy to shrug it off, even though it's the shoulder with the bandage on it. He doesn't have the energy for anything. _

"_I know how you feel, Adam," the cop says compassionately, and Adam wants to turn around and punch him, because he's heard that so many times. "Better than you think." _

"_Oh, really?" Adam hisses, and now, he does shrug the hand off. _

_He doesn't manage to stop himself before he also spits out: _

"_Have you also lots your only friend in a psycho's fucking game?"_

_He doesn't expect an answer. He expects to hear a chair being pushed back and then the door shutting, but instead, he hears the cop's gentle, careful voice say: _

"_My husband was killed three years ago, Adam."_

_Then, Adam feels all reluctances fall apart. _

_The cop has taken all Adam's curses, all his hissing pushing-aways, and thrown them aside, revealed the big, black, overwhelming sorrow that Adam feel and that he refuses to admit. _

_Because he knows. _

_The cop knows. _

_And Adam has to turn around and look at him for the first time since he got in. _

_He's pretty handsome. In the lack of light, his sandy hair almost looks black, but Adam can still see his clear, ice blue eyes, they shine through the darkness, straight onto Adam. _

"_What?"_

"_My husband," the cop clarifies, his face blank. "He got killed in a street robbery three years ago. So I know how you feel."_

_Adam opens his mouth. He doesn't know how to answer that. No one has ever talked about something this serious to him before. He doesn't really have any friends, and with the people he does meet, he rarely has anything more than a hi-what's-your-name-what-do-you-do-conversation. _

_Nothing like this. Adam clears his throat. _

"_I'm sorry, man…"_

_The cop nods. _

"_Thanks."_

_"But I wasn't married to Lawrence," Adam says carefully, and it sounds a bit too gloomy to be a joke, but it's hard to say what else it should count as._

_The cop smiles faintly. _

"_No. Adam, I have to go now, but…"_

"_Aren't you going to ask me about the bathroom?" Adam asks stupidly and looks at him with wide eyes to get a clearer view of him through the darkness. _

_The cop smiles again. _

"_No. I'm on this case, but my colleges have actually taken care of everything. I just wanted to see how you were feeling. It can't be easy… I know you don't have a very big social life, so when you lost Lawrence…" _

_He says Lawrence's name so casually. Like they were talking about a friend of them. And the weird thing is, it doesn't bother Adam at all. It feels like they're talking to someone they both know, like they're sitting in a bar, both holding a beer, and Lawrence will soon walk in and join them. _

"_Adam," the cop says and lays a card on his nightstand, "as I said, I have to go now, but if you feel bad and need someone to talk to…"_

_Adam sends the card a quick glance. _

"_You don't have to…"_

"_Just take it," the cop says. _

_Adam leaves it lying. But he actually doesn't follow his natural instincts and throws it away. _

"_What's your name?" he asks and looks up at the cop's darkened face. _

"_Jake," he replies with one of those small smiles. "Call me whenever you want. If we are to be completely honest, I'm a pretty mediocre police, so I'm free most of the time."_

_Adam smiles weakly. _

_He knows he shouldn't even consider taking that card. Or even do anything except snapping at Jake every chance he gets. _

_He knows he doesn't like asking for help. That if he bet all the odds and called Jake, he'd hate himself afterwards. _

_But Jigsaw has made him stopped behaving like himself at all. Because when Jake raises his hand in a small wave and leaves, the card still lays on the table. _

Adam puts his hands over his eyes to hold back those stubborn fucking tears that well up and roll down, and he lays back down in bed and cranes his head back, like when you try to stop a nosebleed.

_Come on, _he thinks angrily and puts the cigarette on the floor, because suddenly, everything's so miserable, he knows no nicotine in the world can help him.

_We've been through this. It's supposed to hurt like hell at night, but at day, I'm supposed to be empty._

_It's daytime now. Let me stop being in pain. Let me out of it. _

_Please. _

Adam sobs when the pain in his chest just gets worse, when the gaping hole in his chest is filled with despair, with that big, black, overwhelming sorrow that will be there for the rest of his life.

_It's not fair. It's not fucking fair._

**That cutie really **_**is **_**an angst bitch! Anyway, review, and I'll love you forever! **


	3. Insomnia

**A/N: Ah, yes… My darlings, if you learn something about life, please let this be it: Nothing brightens your day as some sweet Adam-angst! AND reviews, of course, so I owe big thanks to those who's reviewed this far!**

**2: Insomnia**

Adam knows it was his fault.

He knows that if he hadn't taken those pictures, those _fucking goddamn pictures _that he's torn up and burned and cursed even after that, Lawrence hadn't wound up in that bathroom.

But he usually escapes the dreams about it.

He's usually empty of those thoughts when he wakes up in the morning, too.

But life still isn't kind to him.

When he slides into a new nightmare the following night, he realizes that it's only tried to lull him into a false sense of security.

_Adam doesn't know what's going on. _

_Most of the time, his nightmares are fairly connected to the reality. Most of the times, they're tiny flashes of what now days is his reality and his past. _

_He's usually carried away from Lawrence's dead body. _

_He usually sees the blood seeping down Lawrence's ankle when the saw eats away at his skin._

_He usually sees that toilet lid flying up under his hands, and then down, crushing bones, drawing blood, as that throbbing, red, hot fury brandishes in him like the string of a violin and sends those terrible thoughts jolting through him._

_Hurt. Hurt. Strike. Kill. Kill. Kill him. _

_And then, Lawrence's hand, cold and comforting, that pulls him down to the ground, plants itself on his cheek, sooths him, insurances him. Loves him._

_That's what his nightmares usually are about. But he rarely gets to the moment when Lawrence is there. He's too kind to fit into his nightmares. _

_That's not how life treats him. _

_But not even his nightmares are this cruel otherwise._

_Because now, he's kneeling next to Lawrence. Adam is out of his chain, but Lawrence is still in his, and his eyes aren't filled with insanity and determination, he doesn't bites down into his shirt. He looks up at Adam, and those blue eyes are full of fear and confusion, his mouth hangs open in silent surprise. _

"_What are you doing, Adam?"_

_That voice. That voice that's usually so calm, so softly, beautifully vibrating, but that right now is shrill with horror. Horror that Adam entices. _

_Because Lawrence doesn't hold the saw himself. _

_Now, Adam is sitting there. And he's holding the saw, that awful, awful saw, and he doesn't want to use it, he wants to snuggle up next to Lawrence, sob into his warm, safe chest and whisper that he loves him, he wants Lawrence to put his arms around him and whisper that he loves him, too. But Adam brings the blade down to Lawrence's bare ankle and pulls it back and forth, back and forth, he kills Lawrence slowly, bit by bit, and there's nothing he can do about it. _

_Lawrence's screams rattles against the mirrors in the bathroom. Adam still doesn't know what's going on, he just knows blood, shrieks of pain, his own fear and anguished wish to die, and that the corpse on the middle of the room suddenly gets up, and that his hissing, rumbling voice apparently can drown both Lawrence and the blood that roars in his own ears. _

"_It was your fault, you little piece of shit. Your fault he did it, your fault that he died, your fault that he died, YOUR FAULT THAT HE DIED…."_

When he wakes up, Adam screams, too.

The screams are louder than Lawrence's were in his nightmare, and they echo against the walls that seem to close down around him, the room is too small, he can't breath in here…

"Lawrence…"

The name comes out as a miserable howl, a desperate prayer on his lips.

Lawrence…

_You killed him, _a cold voice in his head says.

Jigsaw's voice.

_You killed him. _

Adam sits up. His whole body is shaking, the cold sweat makes the t-shirt stick to his skin, and he sits up on his pillow, rocks back and forth like a mental person, while the tears are streaming down his face. Not silent and elegantly like in movies, no, but in a gush that makes him cringe, and that makes his sobs turning into incoherent, hollow squeals.

He's so scared.

So scared that Lawrence will limp back into his bedroom, not to comfort him this time, but to punish him. To take the life that he was supposed to keep.

Once again, Adam doesn't know what's happening. He doesn't even know how he found the card, maybe it's the desperation for another voice that helps him out, but after a while, he's still sitting with that in one hand and the phone in the other and listens to the empty beeping from the signal going through. And all the while, he's cautious about pressing his back to the wall and look around.

He's so scared. God, he's so scared.

"Hello?"

Jake's voice, hoarse from sleep, crackles in the receiver, and Adam answers with a shaky sob.

"I killed him…"

"What?"

"I killed him, Jake… I…"

"Who is this?"

"He can come here… Any time… He's mad at me…"

"Adam?"

"He can come here… And I'm scared… I'm so scared, Jake, I…"

"Adam, what's happened?"

"He said… He said it was my fault… It was… It was…"

Jake sighs into the phone.

"Adam, for God's sake, breath. Take a deep breath and listen to me."

Adam tries to do as he says, but it just comes out as a jagged, pathetic attempt to respiration. He's still crying, the tears are pouring, and his apartment is way too dark to give him any comfort.

"Where are you?"

"Home," Adam whispers pitiably, and Jake seems to be satisfied with that answer.

"Do you want me to come there?"

Adam makes a sound that appears to be a mix of another sob and approval, and feels how the phone slips around in his grip.

"Okay. I'll be there in ten minutes, okay? Try to stay calm, Adam. Turn some lights on."

Adam whimpers and puts the phone down.

Ten minutes. Jake said ten minutes.

If Adam had been in his ironic mood, he would've laughed about it.

Ten minutes.

It might as well have been ten years.

Now, Adam is a kid again.

When his sitting with his back against the wall, too scared to fall asleep, too scared to even get up and put on a light, he's a kid again. He's a kid that afraid that the bogeyman will crawl out from under his bed, a kid that temporarily has thrown all his pride aside and needs, _craves _another person's closure.

A kid that's afraid of the first man he's ever loved.

He doesn't know how long he sits like that. He just knows that while he's alone, all his furniture turn into hovering killers, every gust of wind that sweeps over his window turn into a monster's breath and every gaping, black doorway into its mouth.

But after a while, Jake is still there.

A lamp is switched on. Steps come into Adam's bedroom.

Adam thought he'd locked the door. But he's still happy he was wrong, because if the door had been locked, he'd been forced to get up, walk through the apartment and open it, and he wouldn't have the guts to do that. No way.

"Adam?"

Once again, Adam just whimpers for an answer and sweeps his hand over his face to wipe away what can be either tears or sweat.

"Adam? Jesus Christ…"

Jake's eyes are widened when he sees Adam on the bed, pale and sweaty, his arms wrapped around his knees and his head pressed down between his shoulders.

"Jake…" Adam croaks out, and the tears well up again.

Jake kicks off his shoes, which is the result of years of indoctrination from his mom, before he gets up on Adam's bed, hesitates for a moment before he realizes that the fact that he's talked to the man once doesn't matter, before he wraps his arms around the sobbing little bundle.

Around the inhumanly proud young man that Adam Faulkner once was.

Adam sniffles dejectedly against Jake's chest, because he doesn't think about the fact that he doesn't really know Jake, either. Doesn't think about the fact that his pride has controlled his entire life up until now, or that he'll hate himself for this when it's daytime again.

"Jake…" He repeats in a whisper and clutches to Jake's pajamas. "I'm so… So scared…"

"Adam," Jake says steadily and rakes his hand through Adam's damp hair. "For the love of God, tell me what happened. Was it a nightmare?"

"He… He died… I killed him… I…"

The words are hammered out between Adam's chattering teeth. He doesn't know if he's crying or if he's cold, but either way, Jake presses him closer to his chest, and he's oddly grateful for that.

"Who?" Jake asks worriedly. "Doctor Gordon?"

Adam nods slowly.

"You didn't kill him, Adam," Jake says firmly, almost angrily, and moves his hand down to Adam's cheek. "Jigsaw did. You didn't. You just helped him."

Adam doesn't answer. He's not sure if he had if his teeth hadn't been rattling, or if he'd had the energy to talk, or if he hadn't actually felt tired for the first time in six months, completely wringed out with crying and fear, but either way, he's quiet, aside from his occasional, jittery sobs.

A few minutes later, when Adam is asleep, Jake lays him down under his worn blanket.

And even though Adam finds that hard to believe, Jake probably knows that he won't have any more bad dreams tonight.

**See? Angst! I love angst… But I also love romance, so don't think you're safe from that! And one last thing: REVIEW! **


	4. Burn Away My Pride

**A/N: YAY! Another chapter! Right now, things are mostly centered around Adam's misery, but things **_**will **_**heat up, I promise! **

**3: Burn Away My Pride**

Adam doesn't know if he wakes up from the gentle footsteps into his room or from the sunlight that seeps in through his broken blinders. But either way, he wakes up, rubs his eyes and grunts when he feels a headache throb against his temples.

Then, he opens his eyes and sees Jake's gentle smile in the daylight for the first time.

"Morning, sunshine," Jake says and gives Adam a cup that he seems to have done his best to get clean. "Coffee?"

And Adam sits up, blinks confusedly and takes the cup, since he doesn't know what else to do. Hell, he doesn't even have a memory of calling Jake.

Maybe his brain has repressed every memory of the horror, the darkness, Lawrence's screams, his own anguished tears, his slippery grip on the phone.

Maybe he's done the same thing as he did when he saw Lawrence's dead body for the first time.

"Thanks," Adam says insecurely and looks down into the cup. Black coffee ripples around in it. "But… What are you…"

Jake sits down on his bedside. Looks into his own cup with a small smile.

"You really don't remember?" He says and looks back up at Adam.

Adam looks into those green eyes for a brief second before his gaze flutters up to the ceiling, and then back into the coffee cup, like he's searching for memories in the dark liquid that steams up into his face.

And suddenly, he remembers.

And then, all the color in his body shoots up to his face, a cold feeling beams out from his stomach, all the way out to his fingers, he feels like an embarrassed teenage girl, but how _could _he, how _could _he be so fucking stupid that he called him?

He knows he's starting to care about Jake.

And he knows that will hurt him.

"Jake…" Adam mumbles and feels his blood pulsing underneath the skin on his face as he rakes a hand through his hair. "I… I'm sorry, man…"

"No, no," Jake says and waves his hand distantly. "I wanted you to call. And after a month, I'd almost lost hopes."

Adam makes a sound that can either be a sigh or a laugh and takes a sip of the coffee in his cup.

"Have you… Been sitting here all night?"

Jake nods.

"More or less. I fell asleep for a second on the couch when I knew that you were alright."

Adam's blushing gets a little matted.

Okay. Jake could've gone as soon as Adam had calmed down. He could've not come here at all.

But he stayed.

It was important to him that Adam was okay.

Adam is important to him.

And Adam doesn't panic nearly as much over that as he should.

"So, Adam," Jake says suddenly and moves a little closer to him. "In case you don't mind… I'd like to know what your nightmare was about. I understood that it was about doctor Gordon, but…"

"You might as well know," Adam says tonelessly, because he really can't think of a reason not to tell him. He owes Jake that much, and so much more. "As long as you don't do some damn psychological analysis on it. And call him 'Lawrence.' I don't like his last name."

Jake smiles again.

"I'll try to do both of that. Now, tell me."

Adam takes a deep breath and looks firmly at his knee, scrapes some of the dirt that Jake didn't manage to get away from the cup with his nail.

_You'll break down, _a tiny voice in his head says.

Adam knows that. But he pretends not to hear it.

He doesn't have the energy to do that anymore.

"It was just… Another one of those dreams," he mumbles, and already feels how some of the blush returns to his face. "I dreamt that Lawrence sawed off his foot again, but… It was sort of me that held the damn thing."

"The saw?"

Adam nods.

"Why would you dream such a thing?"

_Oh, come on, _Adam replies in his head and senses Jake's gaze seeking for his own. _You know that, for God's sake, you have to. Haven't you seen enough apathetic hostages in your fancy office to recognize some good old guilt when it's right in front of you? _

"I…"

_What are you about to say? _The voice says almost menacingly. But Adam still doesn't listen to it.

He's been doing that for all his life.

And now, he's fucking fed up with it.

"I can't seem to stop thinking it was my fault that he…"

Adam's voice fades away.

His confession is jagged and stuttered out, crawling out from the shards of his pride that Jake has, in some weird way, managed to smash into pieces, and he doesn't miss it nearly as much as he thought he would.

Fuck, he didn't even think he'd ever get the _chance _to miss it.

He thought he'd hate himself for his breakdown last night, but the thing is…

He doesn't hate himself because of that. Or of this.

He'll never stop hating himself, though, but that's for completely different reasons.

He doesn't even finish the sentence, but Jake understands, Adam knows he does, because he's heard it before, and he determinately puts two fingers under his chin and forces Adam's head up, bores his green eyes into Adam's, sees him standing in his shattered pride, confused, sobbing, shivering.

And Adam's doesn't even try to look away.

"It was _not. Your. Fault," _Jake says with more expressive voice than Adam thought him capable of. "How many times do I have to tell you that? I know all the practical stuff that happened in that bathroom, and believe me, _nothing _in there says you did anything but helping Lawrence."

Adam sighs, finally a little annoyed again, and sweeps his hand away.

"Apparently not helping enough," he says bitterly and takes another sip of the coffee.

Jake sighs.

"You can't ask that from yourself, Adam."

"And what the fuck do you know about that?" Adam hisses. "You don't know me!"

Up until now, Jake has been relaxed, but still on tenterhooks. Ready to comfort, ready to accuse if he has to, ready to catch Adam if he falls, helplessly, like so many other times.

But now, it's like he sinks, his shoulders go down, his firm, glowing eyes drop to the floor, and Adam has never wanted to take something back more than now.

"No," Jake mumbles and get up. "I don't."

Adam lowers his gaze, too, when Jake stands up.

"Sorry," he mutters. "That was…"

Jake chuckles.

"Oh, don't apologize. I really don't know you."

Adam looks at him.

It's the second time he feels this way.

The first time since Lawrence died.

For the first time since he saw that one-footed, bloody lump that had been his only friend laying in that concrete corridor, he feels that blue, black, struggling longing.

The longing to fix something he's broken.

The only difference is that now, he can actually do it.

"You should go now," he says, since even if he pride is just broken bits now, it's still there. "But I can call you."

It doesn't sound nearly as subtle as he'd hoped for.

"You don't know me," he continues. "But… If I only call you when I'm the brim of a fucking mental breakdown, it's not a great chance you ever will, right?"

Jake smiles, a wide, warm smile that affects Adam more than he'd like to admit.

It warms him from the inside.

Deep down, in that cold, dark, hollow thing that's Adam's soul, it gives a little light.

"Absolutely. Call me whenever you want. Maybe we can get a beer?"

Adam smiles, uncertainly and sleepily.

"Sure. Sounds great."

Jake nods.

His hand brushes over Adam's cheek before he leaves.

And that doesn't bother Adam half as much as it should.

**I must say, I really miss Lawrence… But hey, Jake should be able to fix Adam up, too, don't you think? Well, either way, review and brighten my day! **


	5. Playing In Love

**A/N: ****Ah, yes, another half-asleep-chapter… It's just this short little relationship-between-characters-develop-piece, but as I've said, things **_**will **_**heat up!**

**4: Playing In Love**

Adam doesn't know what's happening to him.

Usually, he wouldn't even fight the urge to call. He wouldn't have to, because he wouldn't feel anything. He wouldn't feel any regret for Lawrence, no fear of darkness, and especially not an immediate wish to call a fucking cop he's met twice in his life.

_Maybe Jigsaw was right. _

_How's that?_

_Maybe you appreciate your life more now days. _

_No. I don't. In case you haven't noticed, I'm fucking feeling like shit. And all I think about is you. _

_Yeah. But at least you think. And you feel. _

_I feel like shit. I haven't left the apartment in a week, so I feel a little headache, and a damn strong craving for a cigarette. That's what I'm feeling. _

_Yeah. But you feel. You miss me, and you're scared. That's more than you used to feel. _

This is Adam's new game. His new little way of escaping reality when he's out of cigarettes.

He's playing that Lawrence is alive. Or no, maybe not that he's alive, but more that he's alive in him. That his warmth is in the cold, gaping hole in Adam's chest, heats him up from the inside like a little flame.

And the voice in his head has been replaced with another one. A kinder one.

A voice that loves him.

_Call him. _

_I don't want to. _

_You're afraid that he's going to hurt you. _

It's a statement, not a question. Adam puts his hand in his pocket to check if he's out of cigarettes, and looks at his reflection in the switched-off TV.

_Shut up. You don't know me. _

_Then who does?_

_I know me. I'm the only company I've had since I left home, you see. _

_Exactly. You could use some renewing._

_Mm. Sorry to disappoint you, but my only experience of renewing is that either the renewing or me gets clingy. And that's never a good thing. _

_Call him, Adam. _

Adam sighs.

He knows he wants to call Jake. It's not like Lawrence tries to convince him of something he doesn't want to do.

He wants to call Jake. Fuck, he's even started _caring _about the man.

And in the same time, he hasn't felt a bigger repulse against anything in his life.

But after a while, he still gets up and walks up to the phone. He's a little ashamed over how obvious it is that he's let all his ideals down when he sees that Jake's card is still laying next to the phone.

_You didn't even have the balls to throw it out, you pussy. _

It's not Lawrence's voice that's talking now.

Adam may feel and think since he got out of the bathroom. But his suppressed, subconscious masochism is still there.

Hell, the fact that he's in love with a dead man is a sure proof of that, isn't it?

Adam looks at the card. The white color shines from the dark wood in the table, and he slowly dials the numbers on it.

_Fuck you for talking me into doing shit like this, Lawrence. _

_It's not my fault I'm irresistible. _

Adam chuckles.

_You arrogant asshole. _

The fact that Lawrence isn't there, that he'll never be there again, doesn't make him less lovable.

"Hello?"

Adam inhales deeply.

"Hey."

"Adam?"

Adam makes a hollow laugh.

"Fuck, am I that predictable?"

Jake laughs, too, although with a slight confused undertone.

"No, you don't have to worry. How are you feeling?"

Adam holds back his answer and fidgets with the card.

"Okay. Still a little… You know…"

_Sissy. _

Not even Lawrence's voice disagrees with him.

"What?" Jake says coaxingly.

Adam sighs heavily and hangs his head, gives up, just as annoyed over his pride as he is over his weakness.

They're equally bothering now days. Before the bathroom, at least he got to take certain pride in the fact that he _didn't _accept help, didn't talk to anyone even though he felt himself slowly bleeding to death on the inside. But now, it's coming down, bit by bit, which makes him feel just as stupid while he talks to Jake, or even Lawrence, as he does when he stays silent.

Because he knows he won't be able to stay that way forever.

He knows he won't even be able to do it for a long time at all.

But like he always does when things get too hard for him to handle, he pretends not to notice it.

"No, I'm fine. I was just wondering if you wanted to… Come over. Now that I'm somewhat normal."

Jake doesn't answer right away. And for some reason, Adam can almost imagine his face, the face that he's still only seen in daylight once, with a slightly gaping mouth, not blinking, his strong, secure hand laying next to the phone. But after a while, he still answers, after clearing his throat.

"Yeah, sure. Definitely."

"Great," Adam says, and thinks with a small smile that this probably is the first phone call ever when he's the most talky one. "Are you free now?"

"Yeah," Jake says, and seems to be normal again. "Can I come over?"

"That kind of was my question."

Jake laughs.

"Okay. See you soon."

"Bye."

Adam hangs up.

And in his head, he silently curses himself for his own stupidity.

Because on some level, the part of him that's still way too proud knows that he's just done something he's going to regret.

xxxxxxxxxxx

"Hi," Jake says when Adam opens the door.

"Hey," Adam says insecurely, raises his hand and closes the door behind him. "Um… How's it going?"

"I'm good, I'm good," Jake says and nods along with himself. "And… You're sure you're okay, too?"

Adam rolls his eyes theatrically and walks past Jake to sit down on the couch.

"You know one of the reasons I have my own place is because I _don't _want to see my mom, right?" He says, with no effort at all to hide his venomous tone.

Jake smiles uncertainly and sits down next to him.

"Sorry. It's just that… The last time I saw you…"

"The last time you saw me, I was a fucking nervous wreck," Adam cuts him off, almost desperately. "I'd just had a nightmare and I… You don't think I _usually _call people I barely know in the middle of the night and bawl like a damn teenage girl, do you?"

Jake shakes his head abruptly.

"No. No, I don't."

There's a pause. Adam isn't sure what to say. The truth is that he doesn't really _dare _to say anything else.

Partly because he's afraid he'll snap again.

Partly… Well, because of that. He's afraid of the side effects. He's afraid that Jake will get sick of him and his sarcasms, his half-hearted attempts to keep him away even though he doesn't really have the energy to do that anymore, that Jake will get up and go home, that another person will walk out of his life, and he'll be left alone, defenseless, exposed.

Bleeding.

Either way, he doesn't have to worry this much. Jake is the next one to talk.

"These nightmares…" He says fumblingly, like he's asking something that isn't really his business.

Adam sends him a look from the corner of his eyes to show that he's listening.

"You have them a lot?" Jake finishes off.

Adam looks away again.

"I'm sorry," Jake apologizes, and puts a hesitating hand on Adam's arm, a hand that almost seems subconscious but still defrosts, still comforts, still touches that black, dull, damp place where Adam's heart used to be, a hand that pains and that Adam still doesn't have the guts to shrug off, even though those annoying fucking tears rise in his eyes. "I was just thinking… I thought it'd do you good to talk to someone, and I'm here, I know how you feel… Fuck, I'm sorry… I'm an idiot…"

"Every night," Adam chokes out.

He doesn't even realize that he's saying it. But it's out there now, simply because Jake knows, he's the only one that knows, he's the only one that even has a remote idea of what Adam goes through, and Adam can't say no to him.

Adam stares firmly into the TV. His eyes are harsh, he refuses to look at Jake, he struggles to hold his trembling face together and not cringe like a baby, even though he knows it's too late, it's way too late, because the tears well up, hot and searing, roll down his cheeks and into that hole in his chest, where it burns even more, a globe starts to roll and Adam clenches his teeth because he won't sob, he _won't!_

But the thing is that the last person who touched him before Jake…

…Was Lawrence.

And when Adam angrily draws his hand over his cheeks without being able to stop the tears, he realizes that the reason to why he, no matter how much he hates himself for it, cares about Jake, is that he sees Lawrence's face every time he looks at him, that Jake suddenly is here to remind him of his betrayal and reward him for it, torture him and love him, wonderfully burning, hurting, clawing bittersweet.

Jake puts his arm around Adam's shoulders and hugs him unsurely. And Adam accepts it.

It's been hurting for a pretty long time now. He can deal with that.

The fact that it's wonderful is just an extra benefit.

"Adam…" Jake says in a low voice. "You want me to… Sleep here tonight?"

Adam laughs, the sound comes up his throat and mingles with the involuntarily sobs.

"Are we playing that we're teenage girls?" He mutters and draws his finger under his eyes. "On a sleepover?"

Jake laughs and strokes Adam's shoulder with his thumb.

"Eat raw cookie dough and talk about guys," he says quietly, and Adam laughs again.

And even though it feels like he's betraying Lawrence in some way, it seems like at least the owner to one of the voices in his head smiles.

**See? We already have some more human touch! Eventually, they won't be able to keep themselves from having mad, passionate sex, right? Anyway, please review!**


	6. Reflections

**A/N: ****Hehe… I know writing isn't the best way to cure tonsillitis, but what the hell… Anyway, yup, I'm sick and half-unconscious when I'm writing this, and I mostly wrote it because I felt an uncontrollable urge to do it, so… Enjoy, either way! **

**5: Reflections  
**

Adam wasn't going to talk.

It hadn't entered his mind at all. Talking was so beyond his usual behavior, he hadn't even considered the possibility.

He really hadn't planned to talk.

But he does, anyway. In a weird way, Jake forces him to do so.

It starts off well, though. Adam drags an old mattress out of his closet and puts it next to his bed, Jake helps him to make it with some washed-down sheets he didn't even remember that he owned, and then, Jake lays down on it, remarkably casual for a guy that's sleeping in the same room as someone he really doesn't know.

And for a while, he actually is, in an unconditional and untainted way, _happy. _For the first time in a long time.

Because even though it's his apartment, Adam feels just the way he was joking about before: Like a teenager that's sleeping at a friend's house. When he and Jake make nothing but simple small talk, he still gets the same glittering, twitching sensation in his stomach as he got when he was fifteen, fairly carefree and actually _had _real friends, that feeling of security that isn't secure, the feeling of a tranquil breakout that he thought you only could get by sitting with your friends in a cramped room where the air is foggy with the smoke from homemade cigarettes that everyone smokes but that no one likes.

What's funny is that that's almost an exact description of the life he's lived since he was sixteen.

And it's not nearly as fun when you live it alone.

But Adam refuses to admit that it's the loneliness that's made him this way. He prefers to blame it on the rest of the world, the world that slowly slides by outside his window.

It can't be loneliness that's sneaked all those bitter comments into his sentences.

It can't be loneliness that's squeezed even the anger out of him and replaced it with a feeling of indifference.

It can't be loneliness that's emptied him of his soul, left nothing but an empty shell behind.

An empty shell that in the nights is turned into a human, a human that dreams and that cries, a human that's in pain. A human that mourns.

A human that feels.

A human that he hates. Simply because it's so fucking weak.

But this night, Adam is turned into a different human. Still not someone whom he likes, but at least it's a human that doesn't weep like a baby.

And it begins with Jake, that suddenly, after almost five minutes of silence, sits up on the mattress and leans his elbows against Adam's bed so suddenly that Adam wakes up from the light slumber he's slipped into with a startle.

"Adam?"

"Mm?" Adam says, blinks dazedly a few times and then closes his eyes again.

"Did you love him?"

The question comes so unexpectedly that Adam probably wouldn't be able to answer right away even if he'd been fully awake.

"What?"

"Did you love him?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Adam grumbles and rubs a hand against his eye.

"Lawrence. I know he was your friend, but… Did you _love _him? Like I loved my husband?"

It's a damn good thing that Adam is half asleep.

If Jake had asked him something that as much as brushed over this subject when he was awake, he'd never talked to him again. Jake knows that as well as Adam, and he's not sure of why he does it now.

Maybe he just wants to know. Know if Adam actually… Knows. Knows what it's like.

What it's like when that half of your heart that technically belongs to someone else is torn away. Taken back. Just when you've gotten used to how it feels to have someone else's blood running around in your veins.

Adam still doesn't open his eyes. Instead, he rolls over to the side and turns to Jake, his pale face almost shines through the darkness.

"None of your damn business," he mutters and furrows his brows.

"That's a yes."

"Go to hell."

"Come on, Adam…"

"Shut up!" Adam hisses and finally opens his eyes, they sparkle in black and red, blind, temporary fury. "What the fuck gives you the right to ask that stuff?"

Jake doesn't seem to care about his little tantrum at all. He just shrugs, moves his one hand dangerously close to Adam's tightened fist.

"Nothing. Really. But I… As I said… You'd feel better if you… Talked a little, I think…"

Adam shakes his head angrily.

He wasn't going to talk.

He wasn't going to talk.

He was never, never, never going to let someone into his life again.

But in some way, he can't stop himself, and he closes his eyes as he feels his own reluctance melt away, like the hatch to a dam that's opened, the truth pours out, big and black and overwhelmingly, horribly liberating.

For the second time in less than twelve hours.

"Yes, I did. I loved him, I still do, I've never loved anyone else and right now, it feels fucking impossible to do it again, I miss him every fucking second of every fucking night like he probably missed his foot those thirty fucking seconds he was alive after he crawled out the door to that fucking hell. Happy now?"

He doesn't cry this time, you're going to have to think of that as a progress. This isn't news to himself, he lives every night with this knowledge, and the days, too, if he's unlucky. But he never thought he'd be able to admit it to someone else.

He really thought he would manage to keep the rest of the world out of his life.

He thought that once he'd learned how it feels to lose something before you even gain it, he'd stay away from the slightest risk that it would happen again.

But it turns out that they're wrong when they say that what doesn't kill you make you stronger.

Adam was close to death. He stared death in its white, empty eyes, and in the ambulance reports, it even said that his heart was still for nearly a minute after Lawrence shot him.

He was so close to death.

But he only got weaker. His pride got weaker, the love for Lawrence was like a big club against that dam. And now, when it's open, he's not strong at all anymore.

Now, he has to talk. Even though he wasn't going to.

It pours out of him. Jake doesn't encourage him to anything, it's just Adam who suddenly props himself up on his elbows, looks steadily at him and starts to talk about something he didn't even dare to discuss with himself.

He talks about Lawrence. About the friendship. The love.

He talks about the regret that really was the only thing he got from it.

Luckily, Jake is an amazing listener. He just stares at Adam with a small wrinkle between his eyebrows, with occasional hummings and noddings, even when Adam talks about the guilt.

He doesn't even interrupt then. Even though Adam knows that he doesn't agree with him at all on that point.

Then again, Jake doesn't know about the pictures.

He didn't see Tapp stepping out of the shadows with his hundred dollar-bills in his hand.

After a while, Adam gets tired and falls back into the mattress. He feels completely drained. Like all the words he bottled up was a lump, a dreadfully dark bowling ball in his chest that's suddenly fallen off him, rolled away across the floor.

But he knows that talking to Jake about this isn't all. He has to talk to someone else, he has to say one thing, one single thing to one single person, and the other bowling ball, the one that's stuck in his head and keeps him from thinking about anything else, will roll away, too.

One sentence. One single sentence that he's not sure if he'll ever be able to say.

And he'll be free.

Adam props himself up again and looks at Jake.

"Are you going to tell me about him?"

Jake looks up at him, and on his face, there is a surprise that Adam's never seen on it before. Then again, he's only known him for a day, all together.

"What?"

Adam chuckles and throws his hand out.

"Tell me. Fuck, I've been babbling on about _my_ long lost love all night. Aren't you going to tell me something, too?"

Jake lowers his gaze. Fidgets with the worn mattress. And Adam waits.

He knows Jake will start talking. He doesn't demand it. Waits for it.

And so, Jake slowly opens his mouth. He keeps his eyes on the floor, just like Adam did when he was talking. But in the same time, he has a determination in his voice, a strength in his words, that Adam never had.

It almost makes him jealous.

"I was a cop," Jake begins, silently, lowly and clearly. "I mean, I _am_ a cop. Of course I thought that if anyone of us died out of something other than age, it'd be me, but… I was pretty stupid when I married him."

He stops talking. Adam waits.

It's a little weird that he hasn't even thought about asking that stupid question: "Are you gay?" Jake should almost be used to that by now, and it's something Adam would definitely do before, but now… It just feels stupid. Because for some reason, it's completely natural to him that Jake wouldn't marry anyone but a man.

It wouldn't have been before… That.

But Adam still refuses to believe that he's grown after it.

"I didn't know that if you catch a rapist or something, they know exactly how you work," Jake continues, still without looking at him. "They don't send someone to show up at your door and cut your throat. They find out what you care about the most. And they lash out at that."

He pauses again. Adam doesn't know if he's expected to say anything, and if he is, he doesn't know what that would be.

What do you say to someone who's lost that borrowed part of their heart?

What do you say to someone that you suddenly see yourself in, your own misery, your own loss, your own loneliness?

"So they got him," Jake says.

His tone isn't upset. Not careless, either, but Adam isn't sure what it is.

"He was on his way to work," Jake continues. "Michael. He was on his way to work, and… I think they must've been hidden I some bushes, or something, because they must've jumped out, and then dragged him in…"

His voice fades away. Maybe it even cracks, but he finds it shortly after.

"I went out looking for him when he didn't come home," Jake then says. "I found him just outside. They'd slit his throat. And taken his wallet. They were _twenty-five damn feet away from our house,_ Adam…"

Now, he finally looks up. Adam sees his eyes reflect the glow from the streetlight outside.

So shiny.

So full of sorrow.

So full of the sorrow that Adam would never admit that he feels himself.

All the time.

He said it himself. Every second of every night, and the day, too, if he's unlucky, he feels that sorrow. That regret.

"Did you get them?" He asks quietly.

Jake shakes his head. And looks down again.

"No. They're still out there. Right now."

Adam shakes his head, too. He's not sure what he does it at, though.

"Bastards," he says into the air.

Jake laughs. It sounds a bit stifled.

"Very wise statement."

Adam grins insecurely.

"What? Fuck, I don't know what to say. What do you say to someone who tells you something like this? Calling people bastards has worked up until now, so I'm sticking to that. If you want some professional tips, dr. Phil is tomorrow at seven."

Jake laughs again.

"No, no. Bastards work fine."

They're quiet for a few seconds. Jake has rolled over to his back, he seems to be pondering over something. Adam looks down on him, looks at the way the streetlight paints his face and almost makes it look like a skeleton.

"I haven't kissed anyone in almost two years," Jake says suddenly. "But I think I could imagine kissing you."

Adam chuckles.

"Think? That hurts, man."

Jake smiles. But he blushes, Adam can see that, even in the darkness.

"Okay. I'd love to kiss you, Adam."

"What the hell are you doing down there, then?" Adam says and beckons upwards. "Get up here."

After that, he doesn't think.

He probably wasn't really thinking before that, either. If he thought, he wouldn't call Jake that night, would never say that he could stay over, he'd never swallow his pride as much as he'd done that time in the bathroom, when he fell in love for the first time in his life.

Adam doesn't think of things that are difficult.

He doesn't think of things that confuse him.

So he doesn't think when Jake gets up to his knees on his mattress. He switches off his thoughts and lets his feeling take over.

He doesn't think when Jake puts his hand on his cheek, when he actually gets reminded of how it feels when someone touches him without being half-dead, without his mind being clouded by the knowledge that the hand that touches him won't be around for long.

He doesn't think when he sees Jake's face approaching him, and he doesn't think when he feels the lips that press against his own.

He doesn't think.

He only feels.

It starts off gently. Jakes lips taste of the salty things that seem to dribble down from his eyes without either one of them noticing, Adam's lips of tobacco and the tears that he still won't allow to fall.

Jake thought it would end this way, too. It would end with a simple brush over the lips, without opening any mouths or use any tongues, but it turns into more, hungrier, lengthier, needier, when Adam puts his hand on the back of his head and presses his face against his own again, because then, he can't say no, and Adam still can't think about why he doesn't even feel a _little_ repulse when he feels Jake's stubble against his palm, so he grabs his shoulders and pulls him into the bed with him, keeps pressing his lips to that warm, soft thing that it suddenly feels like he can hide in, like a sweet haven where he can crawl down, protect himself from his suffering and his anxiety, until it's blown over, disappeared.

They fall asleep a little later, entangled in each other, somewhat comforted, simply because a small part of what they both miss has now returned.

**See? Up-heating! YAY! Anyway, I guess I won't have to tell you what I want you to do… But honestly, kind words work better than any penicillin in the world! **


	7. A Suit In A Month

**A/N: Damn… So, this is the third update in two days… I'm on a ROLL, people! And I hope you enjoy my rolling chapters and this little angsty piece…**

**6: A Suit In A Month **

Adam isn't sure how it happens.

It's a slow transition, it happens without his permission and almost completely without his attention. And it should annoy him, since it interrupts with his usual loneliness, but the truth is that the small part that he sees of this transition, he doesn't do a single attempt to stop.

But all the sudden, Jake is there all the time. Always.

When he has nightmares. When he comes home after buying cigarettes. When everything gets too much, when the walls in the apartment close down around him, when his furniture turns into Lawrence that walks towards him with lust for vengeance in his foggy eyes.

Then, Jake is there. Then and always.

And Adam doesn't argue. Because the second he fell asleep in Jake's arms for the first time, he realized that he was wrong when he thought that the bathroom would make his pride even bigger. That he'd actually learn that people always hurt, always abandon, never stay even though they promise to.

But along with the thick armor he'd built around himself, and along with the fact that Lawrence's death has done nothing but strengthen it, the love for him has turned into something destructive, acid that eats away at this armor, displays him so that all Adam's longing, all his thirst for closure is visible. Vulnerable.

Because now, when he's tasted love, tasted that warm, terrible thing, seen how it was hidden in Lawrence's cold, dead hands when he laid in that corridor…

He just wants more.

He can't let it go now.

So despite the fact that he knows better, he can't ask Jake to go.

Of course, it's really Lawrence that he can't let go of, so he clutches to someone that he sees Lawrence's face on. And the need to keep doing that is stronger than his fear of commitment. And it annoys him, in the same time as he loves it, loves Jake, more than anything else in the world.

Because he does.

No matter how much he hates himself for it. No matter how much it feels like he's betraying that Lawrence that still comes into his bedroom sometimes, betrays that cold, wonderful hand on his own until he has to go again.

Because how could he not?

Despite the fact that this transition happens without his permission, how could he ever say no when Jake gently puts his arms around him when he wakes up from one of his nightmares, breaths heavily, sobs and trembles, shivers uncontrollably until those arms give him the warmth he'd never have alone, the warmth that defrosts his cold and dries his tears until he falls asleep with wet cheeks.

How could he say no when Jake's comforting words ghost down his nick, like liquid that dribbles down his earlobe?

He couldn't. He couldn't when Jake kissed him for the first time, and he can't the second or third or fourth time, either.

And in the meantime…

How could he agree with Jake when he hears his whispers?

When he hears Jake's soothing: _It's okay… It'll be okay, Adam… _

Adam will never be okay. He sticks to that. Lawrence lied when he said it, he'll never be okay again, no matter how often Jake is with him. But when he says that, Adam can't talk back at him, can't burst the bubble of heat that he gets to hide in for a few seconds.

Maybe because he almost believes it for those seconds.

Anyway, one of those nights when Jake comes over uninvited, although not unwanted, and they sit on the couch together, Adam with his head on Jake's chest, Jake with his arm around Adam's waist, the phone rings.

Adam startles, he's not used to people calling him now days. Now, when the hysteria about Jigsaw has calmed down and not even cops, journalists or his mother have any interest in him anymore, the only one who's called him recently is Jake. And he's already here.

"Hang on," Adam says in a displeased grunt, since he doesn't feel any wish at all to climb out of that synthetic happiness that Jake actually can lull him into, and stumbles up from the couch, up to the phone and picks it up. "Hello?"

"Hello… Hi. Adam Faulkner?"

A female voice. Light and small. Hesitatingly polite.

Adam furrows his brows, lifts the phone from the table and sits down on the armrest of the couch. Jake tears his gaze away from the TV and looks at Adam with the same surprise in his expression as… That night.

"Yeah," Adam says and answers to Jake astonished look with a shrug. "I… Do I know you?"

"Yeah," the voice says. "Or no, not really, but I… I'm Allison. Gordon. Larry's wife."

For a second, Adam feels like he's falling.

Down. Down.

No. Not like that. More like he's back. Like he's there again.

Like Allison's careful little voice is dirty tiles. Like her crackling breathing in the phone is Adam's own screams: _No, Lawrence! I'm begging you! _

For a brief second, Allison's voice is the bathroom.

Then, he gets angry. He hates her, he's not even jealous, he just hates her, with an unconditional, cold, evil hatred that makes Adam want to yell at her.

It's Allison's fault. Technically.

It's her fault that Lawrence wound up there. Hers and…

"Are you still there?" Allison interrupts his thoughts.

"Yeah," Adam says, restrains his hatred by looking at Jake, imagine Lawrence's face. "Right. How are you?"

Why the hell does he care?

Allison chuckles. And she does no attempts at all to hide the bitterness in it.

"You don't want to know."

Adam nods. When he remembers that she can't see it, he asks:

"And Diana?"

He doesn't know why, but when he doesn't get an answer right away, Adam gets the feeling that she shakes her head. He also gets the feeling that the bitterness runs off her, that she turns from a woman that tries to hide her sorrow with anger into a miserable widow that only has herself to rely on.

He gets the feeling that Lawrence has the same effect on her as he had on Adam.

"She… Has bad dreams," Allison finally says.

Her voice is thick, but it still sounds like she tries to keep some of her dignity intact. Adam sighs.

A poem he read in high school pops up in his head:

_How little space a human takes on Earth. _

_Not more than a tree in the forest. _

_How big the void he leaves is. _

_Not a world can fill it in. _

How true. How horribly true.

Lawrence didn't take more space than a tree in the forest. Allison didn't love him, Diana spent way too little time with him, Adam only knew him for six hours.

But they still have more in common than either one of them would ever admit.

Because all three of them are completely alone without Lawrence.

"Me, too," Adam says.

Allison makes a half-hearted attempt to swallow a sob.

"And me," she says. "So you don't feel too good, either?"

"Never been worse," Adam says bluntly, and Jake looks at him again. "But that wasn't why you called, was it?"

"Partly," Allison says. "But it was mainly… You should know that there's a funeral for Larry in about a month. February twenty-fourth."

She pauses. Adam doesn't know if he's expected to say something.

"Larry would've wanted you there," Allison then says hesitatingly.

"But you wouldn't?" Adam says, only half-joking, and Allison laughs.

"Yeah, of course you should be there. It's probably good if we meet without… Me just having found out that my husband just died."

Adam has to smile. Even though that sentence tears his heart into pieces even more.

Yes. He and Allison actually have met once. At the hospital.

Adam still remembers it. It was right before the cops had started questioning him, before the journalists had found out who he was, and Allison had stormed into his hospital room, her hair had been messy and her face shiny with sweat, she'd looked around in the room in the vain hope to find Lawrence there, before she saw Adam, saw his red-edged, glistening eyes, saw the hateful glances he sent her, and she broke down, leaned her back against the wall, slid down with her hand over her mouth but without being able to hold back her irregular, jagged sobs, and Adam, who'd still hated her, hadn't been able to bring himself to comfort her, or even feel bad for her, just to looking at her, hating her for putting Lawrence in the bathroom, hating himself for hating her.

But now, she's turned from the only guilty one to _one _of the guilty ones.

And then, not even Adam can hate her anymore.

"So… You're coming?" Allison asks uncertainly.

Adam sighs again.

"Sure. Absolutely. Just call me sometime with a place and a time, and I'll be there."

"Okay," Allison says, and seems to exhale. "See you then."

Click. Adam hangs up, ignores Jake's questioning face temporarily, puts the phone back on the table and sits down on the couch with a sigh. Jake furrows his brows, Adam still doesn't look at him, just closes his eyes and lets his head fall back.

"Who was it?" Jake asks.

Adam pretends not to hear him.

"Would you help me with something?"

"What?"

"Get a job," Adam says, like the very thought tortures him, still without opening his eyes.

"Sure," Jake says. "I can drag you around on job interviews all day tomorrow if you want."

"Great," Adam says unhappily.

"Why do you want a job all the sudden?" Jake asks and switches off the TV.

"I've never wanted something less in my life," Adam says sincerely. "But it'd be nice to pay my rent for once. Plus, in a month, I have to have enough money to get a suit."

Jake chuckles.

"Okay, now I'm _really_ curious. Who was on the phone?"

Adam opens his eyes and looks at him from the corner of his eye.

"Lawrence's wife."

Before Jake manages to deliver a reaction to this, he continues:

"There's a funeral for him in a month."

Jake puts a shy hand on Adam's.

"And you're going?"

"You think I'd get a job voluntarily?"

"You want me to come with you?"

Adam just considers the question for a second before he shakes his head.

"No. I'll go myself."

Yes. He will.

Adam will go alone to Lawrence's funeral. He'll go there in his suit, and he'll look at Lawrence in his casket. And he'll say the words.

He'll say the words that ring in his head. Every day and every night.

And then, he might be free.

**Another chapter down! Please review! **


	8. Adam In His Purest Form

**A/N: ****Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for another update! And a pretty happy one, too, where our beloved Adam tries something new… **

**Adam In His Purest Form**

"Well…"

Peter J. Woolman puts his hand on his forehead. He introduced himself when Adam and Jake entered his office, and since then, Adam's been calling him The Wolf Man in his head. Now, they're sitting in front of The Wolf Man's expensive desk on expensive chairs, and Adam hopes that it doesn't notice that he's dripping with sweat.

Something he hasn't even noticed himself – and something he _really _doesn't want The Wolf Man to notice – is that under the desk, he clutches to Jake's hand as if his life depended on it.

And it does.

Because if he doesn't get this job, he's doomed. Then, there's nothing to go back to, then he has to take a job at Applebee's or something else that he's done before and that he does _not _want to do again.

And he can't stay unemployed.

He must have that fucking suit.

That's why Jake dragged him out of bed this morning with a stack of New York Times in his arms. When Adam managed to nag enough to get permission to eat breakfast, Jake showed him all the working ads he'd found. They were in a part of the paper that Adam never so much as looks in, the part that he always browse pass every morning simply because he knows that all of his dreams will be broken if he looks at them too closely, encircled with a blue pen.

New York seems to have more to offer unemployed photographers than Adam thought.

But only if they haven't _always _been unemployed. Because Adam's roamed around with Jake over what now feels as practically the entire city, his feet are aching, and it's really for no purpose, because no matter how interested the guys with expensive desks seemed when he came in, it apparently was a turnoff when they asked him about his previous jobs, and the only honest reply he could give them was 'Burger King.'

But now, they're here. Woolman's publishing. Adam's given The Wolf Man his resume, the Wolf Man has glanced over it, and he actually doesn't seem that bothered at all by the lack of photography and the redundancy of fast food joints on the lined papers.

So far, so good. The only thing that bothers Adam is that he doesn't seem to be able to make a real decision, because he's been sitting there rubbing his chin for almost five minutes now.

"Well…" The Wolf Man says slowly. "You haven't done that much photography…"

"No," Adam says stupidly.

Jake squeezes his hand under the desk.

"And I guess I don't have to ask why you wanted to quit Burger King," The Wolf Man says.

If anyone else had said it, it could've sounded like a joke, but it doesn't now. Not one bit. The Wolf Man says it in a tone that really points out the ridiculousness in a grown man working at Burger King, a tone that makes Adam feel dirty, wrong in the big office, wrong in front of the expensive desk, wrong on the expensive chair, small and filthy and wrong, wrong, wrong.

"No," Adam says again. "I mean… It wasn't what I _wanted _to do, you know? Photography… I haven't done much… Professionally and stuff… But… I like it. Really. I love it. And… I'm pretty good. Actually. I think."

God, he's actually stuttering.

_And why do you stutter? _

_Because I'm nervous. _

_And why are you nervous? _

_You know damn well why. I've never worked with something I wanted to work with. _

_And? _

And _this guy is fucking frightening. Hell, he looks at me like I've just crawled out of a hole in the wall. _

Lawrence doesn't have time to respond before The Wolf Man says something.

"But you've done photography?

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

Adam chuckles nervously.

"I got my first camera when I was thirteen, and… Well, since then."

The Wolf Man nods slowly.

"So you have a portfolio?"

Adam tries to keep himself from bowing his head. He had some sort of vein hope that maybe _this _guy wouldn't ask to see his pictures.

Because this is the part he can't handle.

His photos are the truest part of himself he possesses. Nowhere, not in his soul and not in his body, is there something that shows more of the true Adam Faulkner, a truer image of how he stands there, alone, in his fear and his frustration and his way, way too big sorrow, than on the photos that are safe in a folder in his bag.

Only once has Adam shown that truth with his own actions.

And that was right before Lawrence left him.

"Sure," he still says and takes the folder out of the knapsack that stands next to his chair. "Jake…"

Jake sighs and gets up.

It isn't until now, when his hand gets so awfully much colder, when Adam's suddenly all alone with someone who scares the hell out of him, that he realizes that he's been clutching desperately to Jake ever since they got here.

He hasn't allowed Jake to see any of his photos. Not before they left home, even though he asked to, and every time one of those sons of bitches behind their expensive desks asked to see them, Adam's told Jake to leave.

The thing is that if The Wolf Man looked at the true Adam, scoffed and told him that it sucked, it wouldn't hurt that much. Or, what was left of his soul would get a little blacker, he would get a little more bitter and a little of that damned armor that Jake's actually managed to break down would be built back up again. Sure. But he wouldn't have expected anything else.

If Jake said it…

Adam would never be able to recover.

Jake reminds him way too much of Lawrence. The same blond hair, the same kind eyes, the same stubborn and gentle attempts to force the arms that Adam's put over his head apart to look at his face, and the same unbelievably annoying success when they do that.

And the last thing Adam wants, the last thing he needs if he's ever going to get over Lawrence, is to see the only one who helps him doing it turning into One Of Those People.

One of those people that say he's not good enough.

The door closes behind Jake, and Adam shyly pushes his folder over to The Wolf Man, who opens it and looks at the first photo with a blank face.

Adam stares stubbornly at the desk, god, it looks so fucking expensive that he wants to jam a damn pen in it, and listens to The Wolf Man's silence when he looks through the entire portfolio, looks through Adam, one by one. Reads a chapter of his life over square glasses, and when he finally speaks up again, Adam just wants to put his forehead on the desk he hates so much and cry.

"Well," The Wolf Man says with a chuckle. "This is…"

"Crappy?" Adam says.

He can only pray it doesn't come out as a whimper.

"No," The Wolf Man says. "I mean… You're a… God, you're a hell of a photographer, kid, but…"

Adam's shoulders loosen up a little. It's that 'but' in the end of the sentence that keeps them from falling down all together.

"I need to know that you really want this job," The Wolf Man finishes off. "If you'd been sixty or something, I'd be fully convinced that this was everything you've ever dreamed of, but you have to understand that I've had so many twenty-five year-olds that come here with all the potential in the world, but that takes off after a year."

Adam feels the heart sink in his chest and that absolute, overwhelmingly black hopelessness engulf him. Because he has all the arguments in the world to why he wants this job, he's never wanted anything he can actually have this bad in his entire life, but he's so scared, he's so fucking scared, the tongue turns into a dead snail in his mouth, and everything he wants to say crumbles in his head into a sad pile of broken letters.

_And why are you scared, Adam?_

_I've already told you that. _

_Yeah. But you don't seem to think about the fact that the reason you're scared can be fixed pretty easily. _

_I can fix the fact that I've never lifted a finger in my life? _

_No. But that's not why you're scared, Adam, you know that, too. You're scared because this rich guy with his expensive desk is sitting there and stares at the only thing you've ever done that you've actually gotten pleased with. And you're afraid it's going to turn out as a waste of time. _

_Shut up. _

_You know I'm right. _

_Okay. And what the hell am I expected to do with this information? _

_Don't even let him _say _that it's a waste of time! Don't even let him _think_ it! Because you know what would really turn your photos into a waste of time? _

_Yeah… _

_If they just lied in that folder until even you forgot them. It's better to burn out than to fade away. And if this guy thinks that you don't want the job… Hell, it's not even true, so prove him wrong! Burn! Burn, and he'll notice you! And if some reviewer bashes you once you've actually gotten published, at least you tried! You were brave, you… Lived!_

Yes. Adam is going to live.

Not to live, to be a zombie, was cool. It was kind of nice, before, in that other life that he lived for a while.

But now is a new life. The Afterwards-life. And that only comes down to proving wrong. Proving that fucking psycho wrong.

If he lives The Afterwards-life without living it, he was in that bathroom for no point.

Okay. Now, he's going to do it. He's going to talk.

He's going to talk now. Now.

"I want this job."

The Wolf Man looks at him, almost surprised. Maybe he'd lost hope that he'd say anything at all at this point.

"Yeah, I got that. But _why _do you want it?"

"Because I want it. I have to have it."

Okay. The ball's started rolling. Now, he might as well go on.

"Believe me," Adam says and leans forward, "no one, _no one _that you'll meet later today and _no one _you've met before, no _fucking _one wants that job more than I do. And no one needs it more than I do, either."

"And why do you need it so badly?"

"I have to afford a suit in a month."

The Wolf Man chuckles.

"You can rent that. It only costs fifty bucks."

"Exactly. I really need this job. I'm going to wear that suit at a funeral, and… I _must _go to that funeral, you know? I _must. _I don't want to, but I _must. _If I don't go there… Fuck, I won't need any job in the world, because then, I'll probably hang myself in your damn fancy coat hanger."

He throws his hand out against a coat hanger next to the desk.

He doesn't get why he's doing this. Maybe he thinks that The Wolf Man's already seen the part of him that's in the folder in front of him, so it doesn't do much damage of he sees the rest. Or maybe he's understood at this point that it's good to bare your soul every now and then. At the time and the place. Even if it is to a total stranger.

"The guy that the funeral is held for would've wanted me to try for this job," Adam continues with only half control of what he's saying. "He's like you, rich and big and all that shit, and he didn't really get that not everyone were that lucky. So it's… Fuck, I'm lying, that's not why I want this job at all, it's… I kind of have to… Do something like this now, you know? Otherwise, I'll become one of those old guys that sits in an apartment with ten cats and stuff and drags little kids in there to grope them or something, because… This is… It's kind of the _only _thing I can even consider doing. I un-want to work so damn much, it's stupid, but… If I don't even _try _to do the only thing I actually _like _doing before I get all old… Well, I like to smoke, too, but the only thing I'll get from that is lung cancer, so I think I prefer this…"

He pauses to catch his breath. His eyes are still on the desk, and The Wolf Man doesn't say a word.

"I love photography," Adam then says, a little calmer now. "Showing it to guys like you is scary as hell, but… I love it. And I'm good at it. I think. I'm not good at this whole critic-thing, so if you tell me I suck, I'd probably believe you, but right now… Right now, I think I'm good, and I don't want to look back at it when I'm sitting there with all my cats and wonder what could've been."

He silences down. The hand on Adam's leg is shaking, it doesn't even feel like it belongs to him, and the only thing he can do is hoping that The Wolf Man won't see it, and that he doesn't laugh at him silently, because he still doesn't dare to look at him, doesn't even dare to listen to the silence, just wants to cover his ears with his hands and squeeze his eyes shut like he did when he was a kid and got afraid of something on the TV, doesn't look until he's home.

"Kid?" The Wolf Man finally says.

Adam can't read anything in his tone.

"Mm?"

The Wolf Man chuckles.

"You can't even look at me?"

"No."

"Oh, come on. If you dare to do that ten minute-speech to someone you don't even know, you sure as hell dare to look at him, too."

Adam swallows a big lump in his throat and slowly lifts his gaze.

It takes time. It's like trying to pick a car up with a jack, his eyes hang onto that desk like it's the only thing keeping them alive, Adam has to work to put them on that serious face.

The Wolf man looks pretty old. The thick eyebrows are deeply furrowed, his heavy elbows rest on the table and the clear, cold blue eyes study Adam, not mockingly but interestedly, and in that very moment, he turns from The Wolf Man into Peter J. Woolman, a rich news paper editor with an expensive desk that stands for everything Adam's hated since he was twenty, but that now can fulfill the dreams that are so big that he hasn't even dared to think about them.

"Your name is Adam, right?" Peter J. Woolman asks.

"Yeah."

Adam's voice cracks in the middle of the word.

"Last name?"

"Faulkner."

"Adam Faulkner," Peter J. Woolman says slowly, "give me your number. I'll call you and tell you what's going to happen. I promise."

Adam nods. Then, he takes an expensive pen from the expensive desk and writes his phone number on an expensive piece of paper that he pushes over to Peter J. Woolman with a silent prayer that he's going to be able to read it, even though his hand was shaking like a leaf when he printed it.

After that, Adam doesn't say anything. He just gets up, takes the folder with his pictures and walks out, on wobbly knees and with shiny eyes, but still a wide, triumphing grin on his lips, the first honest smile he's done in almost six months, because he did it, he tried, and even if he won't succeed, he tried, and no one, _no one _can say that he didn't.

The same second the door closes behind Adam, his legs fail him, he falters like a baby that's taken its first steps, or like a young man that's taken the first steps towards his dream, and Jake has to jump to his feet and catch him, with the exact same stupid smile on his face as Adam.

**No making out… But even my little angst-bitch deserves some happiness from time to time! Anyway, review like crazy! **


	9. Broken Porcelain

**A/N: YARG! ****CHRIST, what a long update! I really am sorry, but I've been away. And this is the last time I'll use that as an excuse, I swear! Hell (school) has started again now, and I'll be miserable, but available! Either way, my darlings, read on… **

**8: Broken Porcelain**

Adam is still shaking when Jake takes the keys out of his pocket and unlocks his front door. Adam can't do it on his own, he seems to have lost every trace of power in his hands, and Jake won't ask him to. He has the feeling that if you'd put Adam's keys in his open palm, it'd break, crack like old porcelain, because Adam is so pale and so fragile and so thin, the nervousness has eaten him up from the inside.

It hadn't been a point in taking Adam to another job interview today. Jake had tried, he'd dragged Adam on his shaky knees to at least three more places that afternoon, until he got sick of watching Adam staring blindly in front of himself, quiet and stiff, until the men behind their expensive desks cleared their throats and thanked him for coming in.

Poor Adam.

Poor Adam who can't even believe that these employers want anything good to happen to him at all.

Poor Adam who's heard so awfully many times that he's not good enough, from others or from that mean little voice in his head, that he's started to believe it.

Even though Jake has never seen anyone who's such a wonderful mess, someone as amazingly broken, someone who reminds him this much of porcelain that's covered in little cracks, so small and so fine and so precise that they get beautiful, as Adam.

Jake leads Adam into the apartment. It feels like helping a drunken girl home from the bar, because he really doesn't lead Adam as much as he _drags_ him over his threshold and into the living room, drops him on the couch and then closes the door.

"Are you okay?"

Adam nods silently without looking at him. But Jake doesn't really believe him, since Adam really does look ghastly, his face is pale and shiny with sweat.

"Adam?" Jake says hesitatingly, sits down on the coffee table in front of him and gets annoyed when he hears that he's talking like he usually talks to the people at work who's in shock. "Can you hear me?"

Adam chuckles. It doesn't sound as mocking as Jake thought it would.

"Yeah, I hear you. Jesus."

"Are you going to tell me what happened in there?"

Adam finally looks at him. His eyes are almost as tenderly amused, as greyly velvety as they usually are when he's looking at Jake, but there's still a thin film of misery over them. Adam shrugs.

"Nothing special."

"Then, why do you act like you've been scarred for life during those five minutes?"

Adam grins uncertainly, even though Jake is more serious than he'd ever admit, and lifts his hand to his mouth to bite his nails.

"It was the usual," he says. "He looked at my pictures and said I was awesome."

Jake smiles widely. Even though he hears a silent 'but' instead of a dot at the end of the sentence.

"That's great. What's the hook?"

Adam sighs heavily and drops his hand on the couch. He's quiet for a few seconds, stares firmly at the edge of the coffee table before he slowly opens his mouth and says:

"He asked… He said I had to tell him… If I really wanted the job."

Jake is still waiting for the horrible part. This far, everything sounds good, but he can tell that Adam is recovering from being, for a brief second, completely devastated, tell that Adam's sitting with the same glazed calmness in his eyes that he usually has the morning after he wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping, whimpering, sweating, with stubborn little tears running down his face as Jake grabs his struggling shoulders and forces him into an aggressive embrace.

"What did you tell him?"

Adam looks at him again. Starts to bite his nails, and answers, somewhat muffled:

"I told him. About the funeral."

He talks so slowly. So fumblingly. Like it's a complete disarray in the file cabinet of his vocabulary, like he has to rummage around in his mind before he finds the words he's looking for. And Jake isn't even sure what he's supposed to answer.

Doesn't know how to handle the fact that Adam has done something he never though he would.

Jake really is awestruck. Because he knows that if it were up to Adam, no one would even know that he cared enough to go to Lawrence's funeral, know that he loved him, that he loves him still, that Adam Faulkner, who's spent all his life behind thick layers of armor, has melted, that he let his guard down for a couple of blue eyes, a cold hand on his cheek, a panicking whisper that wasn't soothing, not at all, but that still was all he had.

"And what did he say?" Jake asks gently.

"He'd call me," Adam says and shrugs. "And if I don't get the damn job, I'm going to have to rob Calvin Klein or something, because I need that fucking suit."

Jake nods and sits down next to Adam on the couch.

"And you're still sure you want to go?"

"No," Adam says, quicker than he's said anything since this morning, and takes the nails out of his mouth again. "I don't want to go. I want to stay home with you and smoke and watch 'When A Stranger Calls,' but I have to go. I have to go there and… Say a thing."

Now, the words are hopping out. Like he's waited all day to say them.

"To Lawrence?"

"Yeah."

Jake nods again.

"And you don't want me to come?"

Adam shakes his head.

"I have to do this alone. But you can be here until then. You have to. All the time. You have to be in my apartment all the time, because I don't get by without you. You're a wonderful person. I love you."

The words are still hopping out. Completely without his permission. Adam barely realizes that he's saying them until Jake looks dumbfounded for a brief second, before he smiles that way again.

"I love you, too. You know that."

And then, he puts two fingers under Adam's chin and kisses him, in a soft, gentle way that really is against all of Adam's principals, since he just wants to grab Jake's shoulders, shove his tongue deep into his mouth, feel the heat of another body _beneath _him, not above, since that's one of the few times when he feels he's in a small position of power, the few times when he… Gets to be in control of something in his life.

It's true that he loves Jake. He's known it for quite a while now, but he thinks it's a big enough step in his loneliness-rehab that he even lets Jake into his apartment, and Jake knows that, too. He knows that Adam would never say something like this if he didn't mean it, but there's still a shadow over them, or over Jake, when Adam actually does gain some control over their kiss, entwines his fingers in Jake's hair and presses his face closer.

It's true that Adam loves Jake. But he's not his only one.

Adam loved Lawrence. Loved him, _loves _him in a way that he'll never be able to love Jake.

And Jake knows he's not even entitled to confront Adam about this. It's like a silent agreement between them, an agreement about the way Adam's loss, like a fresh wound, and Jake's sloppily patched-together heart is something they can bond over, that Jake comes over to Adam's place when he needs him, he listens and he comforts Adam about the few things he tells him. And Adam loves Jake, for this and for so many other things, but he's not the only one he loves.

And when Adam walks over to his other love in his mind, when Jake watches how he sits on the couch and lets his gaze wander from the TV to the window, when he sees Adam's eyes turning absent but still filled with a way too present, way too strong and way, way too true and way too pure pain, when he sees the pain being mixed with a love that isn't for Jake, he can't help but feeling betrayed.

**Ah, yes, angst… But maybe you'll feel better if you imagine Adam in that suit he's nagging about? Either way, review! **


	10. Air Castle

**A/N: ****Grr… School… It just… WON'T… ARGH! Anyway, sorry for the long update! And it seems like I'm in a happy mood right now, so I've actually made a SECOND happy chapter! Two happy chapters out of ten! It must be some personal record! **

**9: Air Castle **

The next day, Jake calls in sick from work.

The truth is that he's just as nervous that someone's going to call about that job as Adam is. And if someone had asked Adam, in this condition, to go to a crime scene and comfort women in shock, when they still wore marks from knives that had been in the hands of their husbands, Adam had stared at that person like he stares at Jake sometimes, that way that means that he's an idiot, but Adam loves him, anyway.

So Jake stays at home. He pads out of bed at eight, rummages around in Adam's cupboards for something reasonable to have for breakfast, finally finds some cereals and some milk that only expired three days ago, makes a bowl for himself and then sits down on the floor next to Adam's bed and looks at him.

Just looks at him.

Adam looks so sincere when he's sleeping. So often when he's awake, he's just said something sarcastic, and then, he smiles that way, and so often when he's awake, he sits in the corner of his bedroom, with dried tears like salty streaks across his face, with his arms wrapped around himself, with his teeth chattering, with his eyes steadily fixed on the floor, even though Jake knows he can hear him entering.

But now.

Adam is asleep. And his face is still, more still than Jake's ever seen it, simply because the only times he's seen Adam sleeping is when he wakes him up without waking up himself, wakes Jake up with his own nightmare, wakes him up with hands that punches blindly, feet that kick, whimpers that subconsciously rise from his throat.

Adam is asleep. Without nightmares. And just because of that, Jake feels, for the first time in a long time, sufficient. Sufficient to Adam.

It's not that Adam doesn't think he's enough. He loves Jake, and Jake knows that, too, Adam would never say that if he didn't mean it, it was hard enough to say it even then. It's just that Adam is…

He's broken.

He's been broken for so long now that he doesn't notice it, so long that he's forgotten what it's like to be complete. The scar from the bullet in his shoulder has spread, contagious and destructive like cancer, spread to Adam's soul, black and fragile and breaking.

Adam doesn't know it. But he's broken.

He doesn't even know that Jake can fix him.

Doesn't know that this is the very reason why Jake feels insufficient. That Jake would do anything, _anything _to mend Adam, anything to wipe away those tears that rise in his eyes when he thinks Jake doesn't see him, anything to take away that black thing that's like a veil over Adam's gaze, make his eyes beautifully grey in that way he gets to see them sometimes.

But Jake can't do that.

He's not enough. Not enough to break down Adam's pride. Not all together.

He can't even make Adam do it himself, simply because he's so awfully scared of bringing it up. Because what normal conversation can you fit that into? "Adam, I'm sorry, but you're subconsciously suicidal. Do you want to deal with that on your own, or do you want to spend a fortune to go to a therapist and watch him nod for an hour?"

Yeah. It'd come from a good place, at least, even if Adam probably would punch Jake's front teeth out if even implied that he needed help. With anything. At all.

Jake takes a mouthful of his cereals. And either Adam is a much lighter sleeper than he thought, or he was pretty much awake already, because he grunts and rubs his palms against his eyes. Jake smiles faintly when Adam rolls over to his side and opens his eyes.

"Hey there," he says warmly when Adam squints against him with grey _– grey! – _slits for eyes.

Adam mumbles something for an answer and squeezes his eyes shut again.

"What date is it?" He grumbles and pulls the blanket over his head so that you can only see a black tuft of hair over the edge of the cover that's turned yellow by cigarette smoke.

"Valentines Day," Jake says.

"Don't remind me," Adam mutters grumpily and pulls the blanket down from his face.

Pause. Jake's smile lingers.

How beautiful he is.

"Ten days left," Adam then says.

She sounds more serious than Jake thought him capable of.

"And you're still sure you're going to go?"

Jake can't keep from asking that every time it's brought up. The funeral.

Adam nods firmly.

"You don't have to ask that all the time. I won't change my mind."

Jake shrugs.

"I just thought… It's not quite…"

"Like me to actually deal with the problems instead of hiding under my cover and sulk and let someone else deal with them?" Adam interrupts. "My dear Jake, no one knows that better than me. But I actually have to do this. I have to."

Jake's smile comes back as he nods.

"I know."

Another pause.

"I'm proud of you, Adam."

Adam looks at him. His eyes are still grey, not black, and a smile, more honest and more beautiful than Jake has ever seen on him, spreads on his lips.

"Thanks."

Maybe Jake can fix him. Just a little bit.

But that moment is ruined by the rattling sound of Adam's phone calling. Adam moans tiredly and pulls the blanket over his head again. Jake laughs.

"You want me to pick up?"

"Please do," Adam says dully. "I hate that fucking thing now days."

Jake laughs again and stands up. Then, he walks into the living room, up to the phone and picks it up.

"Hello?"

"Hello," a voice says at the other end, and it's so dark that it almost seems to make the receiver vibrate in Jake's hand. "My name is Peter Woolman from Woolman's Publishing. I'm looking for Adam Faulkner."

For a moment, Jake wonders if Adam lied when he said that he didn't have any friends except for him, before a thin image of a sign fades into his mind.

Company sign. _Woolman's Publishing. _Peter J. Woolman. Adam. Job interview. Yes.

For a brief second, Jake wants to call for Adam to come, gets intoxicated with happiness on his behalf, before he remembers how Adam's voice sounded when he talked to him thirty seconds ago, and then makes an instinctive decision.

"Adam's not here right now. Can I take a message?"

Mr. Woolman sighs weakly.

"Well, I'd prefer to give him these news himself. Just to hear his reaction. But tell him that he got the job he was interviewed for a week ago. As a report photographer."

Jake closes his eyes for a second when it feels like his nerves start vibrating, like guitar strings, when the happiness gets too much for a newly awakened brain and he has to sit down next to the phone on the table for the blood to reach his head.

No way that Mr. Woolman gets to be the one to give Adam these news. No way.

No way that he's going to be the first one to hear Adam's wordless gasping when all his dreams are fulfilled, all his visions that he couldn't touch, not even think about, because then, they'd break, the cracks would spread on them like a spider web.

Jake's going to be the one who does that.

Jake's going to be the one who sees his childishly widened eyes, his hand that goes up to his mouth, his lips that part in a silent cry of surprise.

"You're kidding," Jake says, almost whispers, Adam can't hear him. "How did that happen?"

Mr. Woolman chuckles. It sounds like he can't really believe it, either.

"Well…" He says slowly. "We've interviewed all the applicants for the job now. And about half of the people that came here were twenty year-old punks that thought they owned the entire business because they'd had a job at another magazine, where the editor was there daddy."

Jake laughs. Hopefully, Adam won't hear it.

"And the other half," Mr. Woolman continues, "were pale, tortured little artist souls with dark marks under their eyes, who couldn't hand over their portfolio because their hands were shaking so damn much. And I wasn't that turned on by the idea of hiring any of these guys."

Then, it gets silent. Like he's thinking of a way to describe Adam.

_Good luck with that, _Jake thinks. But doesn't say.

"And then, this kid walks in," Mr. Woolman finally says. "Shaking like a leaf. Looked at everything expensive in my office like he wanted to set it on fire. And took photos like a god."

He sighs. It crackles in the phone.

"He's something unusual. And God knows we need that."

Then, he seems to get a hold of himself. Like he doesn't want to give Adam too much of a leverage by telling anyone, even if it's not Adam, that he's this important to his magazine.

"Give this message to Mr. Faulkner, please," he now says, and his voice is all hard, professionally square again.

"Definitely," Jake says with a wide smile. "Thanks. Bye."

"Bye."

Jake hangs up. The joy bounces and sparkles in him, everything in his veins seems to have turned into something tingling, something magical, but he's cautious about holding himself together, walk into Adam's room with collected, calm steps, even though he wants to jump up and down, hop into Adam's bed, kiss him, on his lips, his cheeks, everywhere, kiss him because he's so happy, kiss him because he's going to be the one who sees Adam's reaction to this.

Reaction to the fact that his glass dreams don't have to be so fragile anymore.

Adam still has the blanket over his head. In fact, he almost seems to have gone back to sleep before Jake grabs the edge of his cover and tears it down from his face. Adam grunts and squints against him again.

"Who the hell calls this early?" He almost hisses, and Jake can't keep the corners of his mouth down anymore when he sees Adam's furrowed brows, sees in his mind how they're soon going to be smoothed out.

"It was someone for you," he says as slowly as he can bring himself to. "A Peter J. Woolman."

And indeed, Adam's eyebrows are relaxed as soon as he manages to register the name, indeed, his eyes are widened when he sees the smile on Jake's face that really tells him everything he needs to know.

**YAY! Adam has a job! They grow up so fast, don't they… (Teary) Anyway, happy chapters demand happy reviews! **


	11. Stupidity Is Freedom

**A/N: ****Ah, yes, I know I suck… But, as always, I blame school! SCHOOL sucks! Anyway, here's just another thing I pulled out of nowhere… And guess what, we're closing in on the end! YARG! It's going fast, isn't it? Anyway, enjoy! **

**10: Stupidity Is Freedom**

Adam chuckles and spins around in front of the mirror in the fitting room. Jake smiles contently and slowly strokes his shoulders, feels the almost chemically clean material under his hands.

Adam doesn't see himself in the mirror anymore. It's like someone made a clone of the Adam Faulkner he's seen in the mirror every day for twenty-nine years, the Adam he's stared firmly in the eye and slowly and methodically explained to how fucking useless he is, and then changed those small things he was so displeased with.

Now, he's another Adam, a new Adam, with the same face and the same unmanageable hair, but with a completely different body, just as skinny but now swept into black, soft Calvin Klein-fabric, with a tie that shaves against his throat but that he's more comfortable in than any of his washed-down t-shirts.

"Are you feeling hot now?" Jake asks with a warm smile and meets Adam's happy eyes through the mirror.

"Hell yeah," Adam says, without dropping the smile.

It's like he's completely forgotten why he's buying the suit. Jake laughs.

"Now we just have to do something about the hair," he says and ruffles Adam's already messy hair. "I don't know if the church would even let you in if you look like Harry Potter on the head."

Adam's smile fades a little, and he rakes a doubtful hand through his hair, too.

Pretends not to notice the electric jolt that shoots through him when his hand grazes over Jake's.

"Fuck if I'm going to look like you," he says and gives Jake a venomous look through the mirror.

Jake laughs again and moves his hands back down.

"Adam, honey, I'd never want you to look like me," he says and squeezes his shoulders. "You are indeed a very strange young man, and yet a perfect version of what you are."

Adam nods improvingly and puts his hands into the pockets of the jacket.

"Right now, that feels kind of nice," he says truthfully and looks Jake into the eye again.

Presses a little closer to him without even noticing it.

Jake looks back at him. Serious now.

"Tomorrow," is all he says.

Nothing more is needed. Adam nods.

"Yeah."

Jake nods, too. He's not going to ask Adam if he's sure that he wants to go, and is neither going to ask if he wants Jake to come with him, because he still knows all too well what the answer's going to be. He's asked both those questions so many times over these past few days, and Adam's always answered with a firm yes on the first one and a polite no on the second, and neither of those times has Jake been able to keep himself from feeling left out.

"Adam," Jake instead says and tightens his grip on Adam's shoulders once again. "Can't you even tell me what you're going to say to him?"

Adam shakes his head. Serious. Serious in the way he only is when he talks about Lawrence.

"Not to you."

Silence. Then, Adam's gaze sort of bores itself into Jake's, firmly, with a teenager's stubbornness, his eyes are buried in Jake's head like a solid, quiet silver drill.

"I love you, Jake," Adam says sternly, almost harshly. "But this is something I can't tell you."

Jake nods again.

He doesn't know why he keeps asking these stuff. He already knows that Lawrence and him always floats together in Adam's head, that they have the joint role of The One That Comforts Me.

It's when Adam has to treat them as individuals that he caves. And he has more things to deal with than he can handle already.

Jake smooths it over by moving his hands down to Adam's waist. Slowly. The warmth from him streams into Adam's frozen body, defrosts him, inside out, his very core almost gets too hot, throbbing and burning. Adam closes his eyes for a brief second.

"Are you going to buy this?" Jake asks.

Adam clears his throat, feels Jake moving even closer to him, his breath on his neck.

"Mm," he replies.

It sounds like a croak. He has to nod to establish that it actually was an answer to the question. God, _God, _it's almost too much already. Jake's always defrosted him, always attracted him, but now, when the day where all of his grieves are supposed to go away, his open, oozing wounds are supposed to be stitched, his thrashed heart is supposed to be patched together and he's supposed to move on, the day when he's supposed to _say _those damn words to Lawrence is so close, it's like all of his emotions are tightened violin strings, and Jake's compassion, his kindness, his warmth through the suit is the bow, caresses, eases, strains so unbearably much.

There's just something about his delicateness. His gentleness. The way he treats Adam like he matters, like he's actually a person, as common and fragile as anyone else, that does it. His light hands on Adam's waist, his lips so close, so close to his ear.

It's something. And Adam doesn't bother questioning it, just gives in, turns around, takes his face between his hands, fumblingly and insecurely, hotly and steaming, warm and soft, longingly damp, Jake presses him up against the wall in the fitting room, gently as always and aggressive at the same time.

And in some way, it's more real, more desperate than any of the previous times.

The previous times, Adam always knew that it wouldn't go further than kisses. That Jake's tongue of a certain amount inside his mouth was all he could handle before the guilt, the cold and sharp, got past all the rest. All that was good, all that was soft and sweet.

And it's not like that now. Not one bit.

Adam slowly brings his hand to Jake's neck, under the collar of his shirt, but still pulls away from his face, since there is some part of him that still thinks clearly, that hasn't melted and started to boil and wants Jake, right here, right now, who the hell cares that they're in the fitting room of Calvin Klein.

"Jake…" He gasps in a raspy voice and without opening his eyes. "Not here… It's…"

Jake's forehead his pressed against him, just like the rest of his body, so Adam can feel his nod without looking.

"But… When we get home…" Adam continues, and nods, too, as if to confirm himself. "Then I'll… I'll…"

He can't even finish the sentence. Maybe because he's not even sure what he wants to do.

xxxxxxxxxxx

All shyness has flown out the window.

All the other times they've kissed, the barricade has always been there. Adam has always been uncertain and Jake has always been scared, scared of crossing the line, to enter that bitterness that always lies as the bottom of his love, that thought about being the second best.

And as Adam's already established, he doesn't know what it is. Maybe it's the fact that they have to control themselves until they actually get back home, maybe it's the fact that the moment of Adam's liberation of his guilt is closing in on him, but either way, when they get back home, he barely has time to close the door behind him.

Then, Jake has grabbed his shoulders with more force than Adam would ever thought him capable of, and kisses him hungrily, his breath dribbles down Adam's throat, his tongue is in Adam's mouth and erases the rest of the world, gives him warmth, gives him life, and Adam responds by letting go of the plastic drape that his suit is packed in, doesn't even think about the fact that it's the most expensive thing he's ever bought in his life, and brings his hand to Jake's chest, paws impatiently at the buttons of his shirt, fucking annoyed on the _stupid fucking material, _desperate for the soft skin beneath it.

The wood in the door presses against Adam's back. He's trapped between The Dangerous, that-thing-outside and Jake's body heat, his lips and his tongue and his hands, _Christ, _his hands…

His hands are way too gentle, way too calm and collected on Adam's hips, so _awfully _close to that place where Adam so badly wants them, and in the meantime, way, way too far away.

That's the difference between them in these situations. Adam's aggressive, Jake's careful. Adam would say that's what makes it so damn good.

Adam makes a sound that almost seems like a growl and that even surprises himself, and finally manages to unfasten the first button of Jake's shirt with his jittery fingers, almost tears the rest of them off in his eager, bares the strong shoulders, tastes the hot skin on Jake's neck, listens to his coughed-out moan.

"Adam…" Jake mumbles and rakes his _gentle _hand through Adam's hair. "Are you sure you… You want to…"

"Do I seem doubtful?" Adam says, almost annoyed, and takes his mouth away from Jake's neck to kiss him again.

Jake only responds to the kiss for a few seconds before he pulls away again.

"You've never… Done… You know…"

Adam wants to punch him and kiss him again, so he tries to lean forward, greedy for his lips, but Jake maintains their distance with a hand on Adam's chest. He won't do anything until they've talked this through, that's obvious. Adam shakes his head impatiently.

"No."

"Okay," Jake says, and his voice is throaty. "It… It will hurt… Are you sure…"

But no matter how much Adam usually loves Jake's Lawrence-esque behavior, he hates it now. Because he's _so _not in the mood to discuss this, _so _not in the mood to be rational, because he knows Jake won't get a sensible word out of him, anyway.

Because the hell is he supposed to think clearly when every hollowness in his body feels so dreadfully empty, aches for him?

"Jake, goddamn it," Adam hisses and takes a firm hold of Jake's hair, "I _want _to have sex! So _stay _here, and I'll get the fucking condoms and all that crap, okay?"

Jake just stares at him for a few seconds, his mouth is open and his eyes completely empty, before he finally gives up every thought of saying anything and nods silently, like a corrected little kid.

He knows that Adam doesn't love him.

But he can't think about that now, either. They both know they're not good for each other, that Adam needs a shoulder to cry on and Jake just needs someone who understands him, but neither one of them can think about that right now.

Because Adam's so hopelessly stupid, and Jake's way too weak to say no to him, wants him way too badly when he stands pressed up against him for another second before he disappears into the bathroom and then comes back out, condoms and lubricant in a sticky bottle in hand, and beckons to Jake to follow him.

Jake's too weak when he sees Adam, as pale as always under the blush on his face, ruffled hair, passion as a glittering shell over the sorrow in his eyes, the sorrow that will always be there and that not even Jake can take away.

He can only walk up to Adam, hands on his hips and Adam's arms around his neck, presses him closer, _needs _him closer, needs to get warm again, and he does, almost too warm, and they fall down on the bed entwined in each other, tongues are battling for control, and Jake discovers that no matter how much his head protests against this, his hands are already struggling to get Adam's shirt away, expose the pale chest beneath, and his mouth travels down just as Adam's did, nips and kisses along his collarbone, fumbles hungrily with his fingertips over Adam's skin, listens to the shuddering gasp that rains down over him and sends his hands even further out of his control, makes them wild and crazy and gives them courage to go down to Adam's fly.

Adam inhales sharply and subconsciously grabs Jake's hair when he unbuttons Adam's jeans, forces a hand into his boxers.

Jake loves it. And he loves Adam.

But right now, his love is nothing but cold sweat that steams up from the heat of his skin, ice that coats the warm thing in his stomach, cold in all the warmth, grief in all his lust.

Jake's love is nothing more than that bitter taste of Lawrence on Adam's tongue.

And Jake has to pull back, has to snatch his hand back like he's burned himself and part his lips from Adam's.

Adam looks at him. The astonishment is like a thin film over eyes that are hazed with desire, and he still doesn't take his hands away from Jake's neck.

"What is it?"

That voice. God, Jake's going to miss it so dreadfully much.

Because he can't do this anymore.

And that tears his heart apart.

Tears it into shreds a second time.

"Adam…" Jake says and tries to get that damn hoarseness out of his voice, tries to swallow the lump in his throat. "I can't…"

Adam props himself up on his elbows. The blushing on his cheeks is starting to fade away.

"What?!"

Jake takes a deep breath. He can't even look at him, only lift his hand again and stroke his cheek.

"I… I love you so much…"

Throaty voice. He can't suppress it now.

"But… I… I'm not… What you want, I…"

The sheet is smudged out in front of his eyes. Adam's cheek disappears form his hand when he sits up.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Jake?" Adam says, almost angrily. "I love you, damn it! You know that!"

Jake nods.

Adam loves him. Jake knows that Adam loves him.

And Adam is so stupid. So hopelessly stupid and wonderful. And Jake can't, at least not right now, be the one who ruins, the one who bursts his bubble and _explains _to him.

Explains why Adam loves him.

Not right now.

He's just going to get himself together, gather those dam tears up and bury them, tie Adam's tie tomorrow, scrape together the pieces of him when he comes home from the funeral.

Be there for him. Since that's what he does. What he's there for.

And then, he might tell him. But not now.

So he really does get himself together, wipes some stubborn tears away and finally looks at Adam, who now isn't the symbol of everything that could ever pleasure him anymore, but just a senselessly cute little kid with an unbuttoned shirt, and strokes his cheek again. Adam still looks pretty annoyed. Annoyed and confused.

"Not now," Jake says. "Later. You're just a little emotional. And I want this to be good."

Then, he drops his hand, because it's like caressing a statue. Adam just looks at him, completely indifferent of his touches, with furrowed brows, his eyes are suspicious, grey slits.

"You think I don't love you," he then says.

"I _know _you love me," Jake says calmly. "And I love you, too. And we are going to do this. When it's all over. I promise."

Yes. The funeral has become their competition with themselves. The bump they have to overcome, and on the other side of that bump, there's just a road, smooth and calm, slow and beautiful, with flowers along its side, streams that run in the ditches.

And they're not even going to overcome that bump together. Adam's going to go there alone, and Jake's going to stand there and wave him off, teary like a mom that sees her son go alone to school for the first time.

And then, he's going to tell Adam why he loves Jake. And if he then has the strength to leave him is yet to figure out.

**Aw… As if the Adam-angst wasn't enough… No, no, I just **_**had **_**to throw a little Jake-angst in there, too! Hope you'll review, because it makes me happy! **


	12. A Twoway Redemption

**A/N: ARGH! Can you believe it? ****This fic is closing down! Damn, I'll miss it… However, this is not the last chapter, even though it's probably the only fanfiction there'll ever be where Adam wears a suit. I'm so proud! **

**11: A Two-way Redemption**

Adam knows Jake won't be there.

Instantly, as soon as his eyes open, he knows immediately that Jake won't be there.

When Jake is in his apartment, he feels it. He feels it before he hears the simmering from the coffee pot on the stove, before Jake steps into his bedroom, ruffled hair, deep shadows under his eyes, a sleepy smile.

So beautiful.

But now, Jake isn't there. Adam can tell as soon as he rolls over to his side and sees the numbers on the clock radio on his nightstand.

He can tell it by the number 13:48.

He can tell it because the numbers would shine brighter if Jake were here.

And indeed. Then, he rolls over to the other side, sees the pillow that hasn't even been touched tonight, Adam knows it, only by a note, torn from a notepad Adam's spilled coffee on, scribbled down with Jake's almost sickly neat printing.

_Had to go to work. Good luck today. Jake_

Adam nods to himself and stands up from the bed.

He's not sad. He knew this was coming, knew that no good things last, that what happened to Lawrence was a premonition of how the rest of his life would be, a prophecy about how everything good eventually leaves you.

And we can forget for a second that he feels even emptier than before.

That the hollowness inside him, that thick gash straight across his heart and his soul and his dreams, that gash that Lawrence sawed open while he sawed off his foot and that Jake almost managed to stitch, now is torn open, oozes and bleeds, screaming, hissing evilly.

_Bleeding love. _

He doesn't know why he thinks that.

He walks into the kitchen, opens the fridge. A few days ago, Jake got sick of feeling like he'd crush Adam every time he was lying on top of him, he'd buy him a whole new food assortment so he didn't have to be so damn skinny, and Adam had said, without really being able to sound mean, that Jake would eat that assortment, too, and if he got anything more to eat, he definitely _would _crush Adam when he laid on top of him. And Jake and pinned him down on the couch, they'd wrestled, one of those wrestling matches that always ended with lips on lips, tongue roaming tongue, an angel's wings closing around him.

Adam slams the fridge shut again. The thought of eating any of that food makes his stomach turn.

xxxxxxxxx

The clear signs that a neat person lives here, but in the meantime, that said neat person rarely has time to tidy things up, are still there. Just like Jake left it. Only that now, it's all covered with a thin layer of dust, the flowers in the window are dried and frail.

_Because you haven't been here in a long time, _a little voice in Jake's head says. _And you know why you haven't? You've spend every possible second with someone who needs you, someone who needs you a hell of a lot more than those flowers do. _

_Someone who need you now more than ever, but would never admit it._

_And that you've left behind. _

Jake sighs and closes the door behind him.

He'd told himself he'd at least be there when Adam woke up in the morning. But he can't even do that right.

He should be at work right now, actually. And if not because he was needed, then just to tell the truth, to be a good person in that aspect, since he obviously doesn't have the balls to be one in any other.

xxxxxxxxxxx

_Tell Diana that I love her. _

_I will. _

_And tell Allison… _

Lawrence quiets down. It sounds like he sighs.

It's been a while since Adam talked to him.

Maybe because he's got a new love now.

A love that thinks that Adam's cheating on him. With a dead person.

_What do you want me to tell Allison?_

_That… I wish things had been different. _

Adam understands this. He buttons his shirt and looks at himself in the mirror. Ruffles his hair a little.

_But if things had been different, we'd never met, _he answers and finds himself jealous of the girls that can just put makeup over those damn dark rings under their eyes. _He _looks like he's dead, damn it.

And he still goes to that funeral because he's happy he's alive.

_That is true, _Lawrence admits.

Pause. Adam takes the tie that he's hanged over the edge of the bathtub. He actually knows how to do one of these knots. Simply because he wanted at least one thing that separated him from the rest of the unemployed losers who never talked to their family.

_Do you regret anything, Adam? _Lawrence suddenly asks.

_No, _Adam says, with absolutely no hesitation.

He's never doubted this. Not even when he saw Lawrence dead, not even when he was strapped down on a gurney and felt the engines in the ambulance he was in working, did he ever doubt this.

_I don't have any regrets at all, in fact, _Adam continues. _Everything in my life led me to you. And you taught me a lot. _

He feels Lawrence's smile. That reassuring smile, that smile he wanted Lawrence to stand up and smile when Adam first saw him in that corridor, his hands pale and stiff, his black pants drenched in his own blood, when the grim reaper was hovering over him.

_Like loving? _

_Kind of. _

_And that you shouldn't push away someone if you love them and they love you? _

_Fuck you. _

_Don't make the same mistake with Jake as you did with me, Adam. _

To this, Adam doesn't answer. He just checks the knot on the tie, walks outside of the bathroom and takes the jacket that hangs on the coat hanger next to his front door, puts it on, and then bends down to tie the shoes he placed there yesterday.

Jake gave them to him when Adam had said that he didn't have any shoes but worn Converses, and they didn't fit with his tux.

But Adam tries so hard to ignore that thought when he walks out the door and doesn't care about locking it behind him.

He doesn't have time to that. He's already late.

Adam's mind is more or less switched off while he walks to the church. He knows that if he turns it back on, Lawrence's damn voice will be there, and he can't handle that right now.

He can't listen to Lawrence while all his focus is on The Words.

The four little words that Adam has to say. That he has to say to be set free, and maybe able to go back to Jake.

Four little words.

Okay. He can do this. Adam can do this.

He can spot the big gates to the graveyard on the other side of the street – apparently, he's been focusing so hard on these four little words that he hasn't even thought about taking the bus to a church that's four miles away – walk up to them, open them and half-run up to the doors to the church. He can even open them, too.

The uncomfortable benches are full of black-dressed people, they're all facing the priest that stands at the altar and reads from the bible. He doesn't look up, even when Adam closes the giant gate behind him and tries to walk as silently as possible up to the front row of the benches, though he feels a lot of disapproving looks from the other guests.

Adam sits down. There's a coffin up at the altar, he can't see what's in it and he doesn't want to, even though he knows it's not Lawrence. It's not Lawrence lying in there.

Adam manages to tear his gaze away from the coffin. It wanders up to the front bench on the other side of the isle, and spots a woman, all dressed in black, struggling with her tears, her sharply red lips are quivering, her blonde hair is a shining light in all the black, and even though he's only seen her once, briefly in Lawrence's doorway, when he kissed her goodbye in the morning, she's still stuck in Adam's mind like she's stuck on a picture that Adam took that morning and that was only meant for Lawrence, and he has absolutely no doubt that it's Allison sitting there.

With ghostly pale, ghostly silent, ghostly, overwhelmingly, silently _sad _Diana next to her.

Adam thought she'd cry. Thought that an eight year-old wouldn't even get the term of shock, get that some sorrows aren't big enough for tears, get that some things are so anguished and unfair that you don't even get that they've happened.

Diana doesn't cry. She's just shaking.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Jake is sitting on his couch. He doesn't want to admit it, but his gaze keeps flickering over to his clock.

It starts now. Adam is there now.

Alone.

_And you can't stand that thought, can you? _

Jake doesn't even try to deny that.

_God, Jake, _that little voice moans. _I don't get why you're even trying. We both know you'll go there any second now. No matter what Adam treats you like. _

Fuck. It's right.

Jake realizes that now. He doesn't get if it's the thought of Adam alone that stirs that usual nurturing instinct up in him, or if it's just being away from Adam that actually allows him to think straight for once, but suddenly, he realizes it.

He'll never leave Adam. And Adam will never leave him.

Jake has lived four years without anyone who gets it, gets why his heart is torn into bloody scraps that lay scattered around in his living room, coated with dust. Useless and grey.

And Adam gets it. He's never said that, their entire relationship is built around Adam, Jake's feeling and his loss aren't very important, but he gets it. Jake knows he gets that.

And Jake depends so much on that that he'll never be able to leave Adam. And Adam will never be able to stop seeing Jake as anything but Lawrence 2, because that's what he needs. He never really got to know the real Lawrence, so he gets a substitute. Then he doesn't have to deal with the loss of him for a while.

That's what Jake is to him. Lawrence 2.

And yet, Jake knows there's nothing for him to do than to stand up and jog out the door.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Adam's hands are almost spasmodically clasped in his lap. The tie slowly seems to turn into a noose that closes around his neck, gently squeezes life out of him, and he doesn't know why he feels that way, he doesn't know why he can barely breath or why his clogged-up throat burns with suppressed sobs. Because this isn't happening. This isn't for real.

He's not sitting on this uncomfortable wooden bench. He's not seeing Allison a few feet away with a hard grip on Diana's hand. He's not attending to the first funeral of his life.

And more than anything: The funeral isn't for Lawrence.

It's not Lawrence the priest is talking about.

It's not his Lawrence that's lying in the black coffin at the altar.

Because this isn't happening. This isn't for real.

Finally, Allison can't hold her tears back, and she sobs calmly and elegantly with her hand over her mouth, and Adam can't keep himself from looking at her, his eyes black, and think: _What kind of fucking fake tears are those, you fucking bitch, you should be the one laying in that coffin, it was your fault Lawrence wound up in that bathroom, you were the one who made him unhappy, it was your fault, only your fault…_

Adam knows it's wrong. He knows Allison really is upset, but right now, he hates her. He hates her from the darkest, coldest core of his hatred, because a simple fact remains: If it weren't for her, Lawrence would still be alive.

Adam doesn't know how long he sits that way. He doesn't listen to the priest, because he's just lying, anyway. Lawrence isn't in that coffin, he'll soon walk through the gates to the church and lay his hand on Adam's cheek and say that he's just wounded in the shoulder. But after a while, he still finds himself alone in here. The priest has closed his bible and went away, and the guests have walked past the coffin that Lawrence _isn't, isn't, isn't_ lying in, and gone out, too.

_Yeah, they have,_ the voice in Adam's head says, gentler than usual. _Everyone is gone. And you know why, Adam? You know why Allison isn't sitting on that bench with Diana's hand in her right one and her left one covering her mouth?_

_Because they've all gone outside. They've left Lawrence behind._

_They've said goodbye._

_You have to, too._

Adam rarely listens to that voice. The truth is that it's wrong more often than not, and when it's right, he usually still doesn't listen to it, unless it tells him how useless he is, since in most cases, the advice it gives him involves him taking a risk, or asking for help, or be vulnerable with someone, but now, he gets up and walks slowly, slowly, in the fanciest shoes he owns, up to the coffin.

And it really is Lawrence lying there.

Adam actually has to smile. Even though everything is miserable. Even though his heart is slowly torn out of his body once again.

How beautiful he is.

His Lawrence. He's lying there in his tux and his combed hair, and he's pale, he's so dreadfully _pale,_ but he's so beautiful. So beautiful.

Adam inhales. Slowly and shaky.

"Lawrence…" He says softly and puts his hand on the edge of the coffin. "Hey, man…"

His heart has been torn out. Twice. But he still hears his own pulse pound in his ears.

"I'll… I'll miss you…" Adam mumbles and slowly taps his fingers against the varnished, wooden surface. "And… I'm never going to forget you…"

What the hell is he doing? Is he doing a fucking speech, or something?

He didn't come here to become Miss America.

Adam came here to get one single thing out in the open, one single thing that Lawrence has to know, one single thing he has to say.

Even though it's too late.

Adam inhales again. The breath is even shakier this time, his eyes shinier, with more emotions trapped behind them than ever.

_Let go, Adam._

"I'm so sorry, Lawrence."

And then, it crumbles.

Everything he bottled up.

Everything he wanted to hide away.

Everything he's ashamed of.

Everything in his life that didn't work out like it supposed to.

Everything he wanted to tell Lawrence, that he'll never get to hear, never again.

All of that falls apart and seeps out of Adam's eyes, and he cringes, the corners of his mouth goes down, like on a baby, and he sobs and trembles as the tears keep streaming down his face, and the crying wrings him out, squeezes him like a dish cloth, forces him down to his knees as his hands clutch to the edge of the coffin, clutch to something he only had for six hours, something amazing that he barely gained before he lost it, and he repeats the same thing, over and over, it feels like he's been wanting to say it for the whole life he lived in silence.

"I'm so sorry… So sorry… I'm so sorry, Lawrence…"

Adam leans his forehead against the wood. The crying is like a cramp, it works its way through his body like terrible waves.

Until two strong arms are wrapped around his waist and pulls him onto his wobbly legs.

Adam can't stand by himself. He'd never admit it, not even to himself, but he can't get by on his own. So he tells himself that the only reason he leans against Jake's chest is that it's like leaning against warmth, against the comfort he suddenly finds himself completely relying on, which he's too sad and drained to question himself about.

"It'll be fine, Adam," Jake mumbles and draws his hand through Adam's hair. "I know it doesn't feel like that now, but it'll be fine."

"I love him," Adam croaks out, and the tears keep pouring

"I know."

"I love him, Jake."

"I know. Come on."

"I love him."

"I know. Come on. Let's get out of here."

**Aw… Adam comes off as a bastard here, but don't worry, he'll get redress in the next chapter! And in the next chapter, I'll also get to add another completed Saw-fic to my collection… Anyway, review!**


	13. There's Someone Else

**A/N: Okay, I'm really sorry if I scared someone by saying that this chapter would be the last one, but fortunately, this one turned out a hell of a lot longer than I expected, so there's this chapter, and then a sweet little epilogue to look forward to! YAY!**

**12: There's Someone Else**

Adam leaves Jake at the gate to the graveyard. When he shrugs his arms off, Jake looks at him in surprise, but Adam smiles at him. He wants it to look reassuring, but he's not sure he pulls it off.

It's possible that it looks like a cringing mask. Even though things are going to change.

"Don't you want to go home?" Jake asks.

Adam shakes his head.

"You wait here. I have someone I have to say goodbye to."

"But I thought that was what you just did."

Adam smiles. There's a film of sadness over his face.

"Not him. It's someone else. But I'll be right back."

And then, Adam walks back up the graveled path to the church. All the guests are outside now, mingling and chitchatting, like black little ants they scurry around with their glasses of sherry. Adam finds her close to the big gate to the church, and he has to stop and look at her.

He thought she'd be surrounded with other rich wives, more black little ants that want to tell her they're sorry for her loss. But she's all alone, leaning against the white pane of the church wall, she, too, dressed in black, her glass of sherry hanging dead from her fingertips along her side.

She straightens up when she sees him. Doesn't even try to smile, and Adam doesn't want her to.

"I thought I'd say goodbye."

Allison nods. Her eyes are red and puffy from her breakdown in the church, but she's calm and collected now.

Calm and collected.

Like Lawrence.

For some reason, the mere thought is like a stab in Adam's heart.

"Will you come back and see me?"

Her voice isn't nearly as proud as her posture. It's a squeak, a little girl's plea for her dad to sit by her bed until she's forgotten about her nightmare, and that's another stab. Adam's eyes almost well up again when he hears her.

She's not supposed to sound like. He needs to know that she'll be okay. Needs to know that he'll leave a survivor behind, needs to know…

Needs to know that he can leave her forever, and she'll still stand tall.

He doesn't hate Allison anymore. Not at all. He wants to put his arms around her, he wants her to be strong like he wanted Lawrence to be, doesn't want her to break down, because then, he won't be able to keep himself from doing that. But he won't be able to see her again. He won't.

"I…" Adam begins and draws his foot through the gravel. "I'm… Sorry. I don't think I can do that."

Allison nods again. Her gaze flutters down to her glass, she shakes it a little like she tries to find Lawrence in the brown liquid.

"You're going to be okay?" Adam asks.

Allison chuckles hollowly, shakes her head and raises her eyebrows, still without looking at him.

"I have to be, don't I?" She asks, and her voice is already crumbling like an old brick wall. "I… I have Diana, and she hardly needs mommy to break down in a ball of tears in the corner… But…"

A pause. Adam wants to touch her, but he doesn't.

She can't have anyone interrupting her right now.

She won't get another chance to tell him this. And she doesn't have anyone else to tell it.

"But… I…"

A dry sob. She puts her hand over her mouth.

"I miss him so much!" Allison croaks out, and tears start streaming down her face again, her mascara and eyeliner turn into sad tiger stripes across her face.

Adam nods.

"I know you do."

Another pause.

"I loved him, you know."

It just slips out. Adam has no idea why he says it, but it doesn't really matter, because Allison doesn't seem surprised at all. She doesn't even look up.

"I guess it was… The bathroom," Adam continues with a shrug. "I wouldn't even have _liked _the guy if it wasn't for the bathroom. But… I think it was the fact… Even when we were there, and… We were in shackles, and you and Diana were with a gun to your heads somewhere else, he was… He was still… All calm."

Adam chuckles weakly.

"When I looked at him, it was like… Like he could just make that chain go away. If he waved his wand a little."

Allison makes a sound that's either a laugh or a sob, but Adam has to guess for the latter. She doesn't cry anymore, at least. Now, she's more like she was before, frail and beautiful with the nervous smile, frail because it's only skin that keeps all of her emotions and all of her sorrow from spilling out, flowing out into a black pool in front of her.

"That was Larry in a nutshell, wasn't it?" She says and finally looks at Adam as she draws a thumb under her right eye.

Adam nods with a small smile.

"It was," he says softly.

Another pause.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to put up a triangle drama at his funeral," Adam says, not sure if he's joking. "But I did love him. I fell in love with your husband in that bathroom."

Allison nods and sniffles. She even looks at him and smiles, and Adam is, against his will, very impressed.

"I guess that's okay," she says with a shrug. "I mean… It's good that someone… Appreciated him. That calm and the control and all that stuff that you fell in love with… God, I hated all that at the end of our marriage…"

She sniffles again, pulls a handkerchief out of her sleeve and blows her nose in it.

"I really did love him," she says, suddenly in a firm voice. "You should know that. I never married him because I was pregnant or because he was rich or something, please don't think that. I was… Head over heals in love with him when I married him."

Adam nods. Even though he really can't picture Allison and Lawrence, _his _Lawrence, cuddling together on the couch in front of a crappy TV-show.

"I loved the calmness and the control-freakiness, too," Allison goes on. "But at the end… Every time he was in front of his laptop and me and Diana just… Stopped existing to him, I swear to God, I just wanted to… Smash it into pieces."

She pauses again. Her eyes get stuck on a point right above Adam's head, and Adam can't help but hoping that she looks forward.

Forward for herself and for Diana.

For him.

Forward, towards a better future.

"Maybe if I'd told him," Allison says, and for the first time in ages, it sounds like someone actually wants Adam's opinion on something. "If I'd told him that I loved him. You think it would've lasted?"

Adam scoffs and lowers his gaze.

"I ask myself that question every fucking night."

Allison looks at him. And her eyes are all wet again.

Nothing is simple.

Adam can't help but thinking that.

Nothing is simple. Maybe it is to other people, but not to him. He was given a crappy life, and when he reminded himself of that too often, some fucking psycho had to put him in a shackle, made him taste pure, untainted love for the first time in his life and then snatch it away.

But in the meantime, that is what life is. It sucks, and it's a struggle for every second of every day, but he just has to learn how to live with it. He just has to learn how to live with life, learn how to let other people into it, let other people help him stand and let other people struggle with him.

That is life. Adam's life is nothing but powering through, powering through, powering through.

And in that way, it is very simple.

"You really won't come and see us?" Allison asks, once again with that praying tone that tears Adam's heart apart when he realizes what he has to answer.

"No," he says and shakes his head. "It's… Too hard. I can't see you without thinking that it was your fault."

Allison nods again. She almost seems to smile when he puts her eyes on the ground.

"I know. It'd be kind of weird, wouldn't it? I just thought…"

She stops talking abruptly. But it seems to be because she has to figure out what she really wants to say, not because she cries again.

"That's why you fell in love with Larry, too, I think," Allison then says, and for once, Adam doesn't freak out when someone analyzes him. "Because… He knew how you felt. He knew what you'd gone through. And I'm not saying I'm in love with you, I'm just saying… That most people need someone like that."

She makes another pause, but she goes on before Adam realizes the meaning of her words.

"You know what I've been through," Allison says, almost whispering now. "Only you do. Except for Diana, and I can't talk to her. And I don't know if anyone else knows what you've been through, but if there is someone else… Boy, you have no idea how lucky you are."

Adam doesn't.

The thought strikes him like a whack over the head.

He doesn't know how lucky he is.

How lucky he is to have Jake.

How the hell could he have missed that?! How the hell could he have been so busy mourning over Lawrence that he's missed all the wonderful things right in front of him?

How could he have missed his first love so much that he forgot that there was a new one, just as good and just as wonderful right in front of him, someone just as wonderful that he could talk about that first loss with?!

"I do have someone else," Adam says, maybe more to himself than to Allison.

And before Allison manages to reply, he looks her straight in the eye and goes:

"I'm sorry, I know you probably thought that if I didn't, I'd come crawling back to you, but I do."

Allison laughs in that hollow way again.

"No, I didn't think that. You don't seem like the crawling kind of guy."

Adam smiles, too.

He isn't that kind of guy.

Or _wasn't. _

Because things will change. They will change now.

Allison's smile fades away. Adam looks at her, for a second, and manages to think that she looks like a porcelain doll that's about to fall apart, but that he knows will stay put, anyway, because she needs to power through as much as he does, before she steps forward, takes her glass of sherry in her left hand and wraps her right one around his shoulder, presses him against her in a hug, very briefly, just for a second, before she lets go, steps back. And smiles.

He isn't going to miss her. Even though he doesn't hate her anymore.

He's not going to miss her, since unlike her, he has someone else.

It's just taken him a while to realize it.

**Don't get me wrong, I hate Allison as much as any other ChainShipper, but I think even she deserves a little moment of softness every once in a while. I've only written about her once before, and then, she was the worst bitch of all times, and I guess this is her redress! Review and tell me how much you love me, please… XD**


	14. Letting Go

**A/N: ARGH! The last chapter! (Sobs) Although, I'm still pretty proud of myself. I never thought I'd be able to keep up a relationship between Adam and an OC for this long! YAY for that! Plus, I got, like, three other fics in my head, so you couldn't keep me away from ChainShipping if you tried!**

**13: Letting Go **

Adam is sitting on the couch with Jake. They've been sitting like this for an hour now, since they came home from the funeral.

Adam is quiet.

Jake is quiet.

A puddle of unspoken words rests between them.

Adam doesn't ask why Jake showed up at the funeral. Jake doesn't ask what Adam said to Allison.

Adam knows he has to say something. Jake knows he has to say something.

They're both looking for answers. And they're not sure if the other one has them.

But they also know that there's plenty of time to figure that out.

Jake's realized that he'll never be able to leave Adam. Adams' realized that Lawrence is never coming back. That he will be alone with his misery, have no one to talk to, no one who understands one of the most terrible things that can possibly happen to a person.

But he's also realized that even if no one understands, he does have someone who listens. Who'll try to understand.

That even though the bathroom was the second worst thing in his life, and he has no one to talk about that with, he has someone who he can talk to about _the _worst things that happened in his life.

And he's never letting that person go. He'll never be that stupid again.

Finally, Jake says something.

"You know, Adam…"

There's a pause. Neither one of them look at each other. The TV's playing, and they both stare at that, instead, almost mechanically. Jake starts over. Adam's never seen him this awkward.

"I'm here now," Jake finishes off. "I mean, if you want me here. These next couple of months will be terrible, but… I'll be here. If you need someone to… You know, talk to."

Adam nods. He's surprised over the small effect these words have on him.

Maybe because he already knew this.

"I'm here, too."

Adam doesn't even get that he was the one saying that until Jake actually turns to him, his expression surprised.

"What?"

"I'm here," Adam says plainly and throws his hand out. "Damn, it feels like that first night we made out. We've been talking about me for the past two months now. Like I'm the one who's lost someone. But I'm here now. For you, too, I mean."

Jake smiles, almost sadly, and turns to the TV again.

"That's okay. It was probably worse for you. Anyone who went through that would have nightmares for life, but you didn't just go through that. You lost someone you loved along the way."

Adam doesn't answer. He just lets the words sink in, lets them be a warm, safe armor around his heart, something that keeps other people from hurting it but also keeps Jake there. With him.

Because they are comforting in some way. Even though he's never heard anyone stating Lawrence's death so plainly since he was carried away from him, carried away from Lawrence's dead body by paramedics who chanted it over and over: _He is dead, Mr. Faulkner. Your friend is dead, Mr. Faulkner. _

"You don't love me," Jake suddenly says.

Adam doesn't answer.

"You love Lawrence. And you love me because you see his face whenever you look at me."

Jake isn't sure what he wants to achieve by saying this. He already knew this, it's not news to him, and he's sure Adam knows it, too. Hell, he doesn't even deny it, something Jake wants him to more than he wants to live right now.

Living with someone who doesn't love you isn't that desirable, anyway.

But sometimes, you still have to stay with them. Because you can't stand the thought of them being alone.

"No," Adam finally says.

He doesn't sound upset. He can't really blame Jake for thinking this, but Jake still hears the surprise in his voice. Like he doesn't get why Jake would say something like that.

"No, that's not why I love you at all," Adam continues, still without looking at him.

Pause. Jake isn't really convinced, but he still feels his attention being caught.

"I see Lawrence all the time," Adam says, almost wearily, like his sick of it, sick of it but never wants it to go away. "Seriously. Every damn time I close my eyes, every goddamn night, he's even come into my room sometimes. But only on good nights. I don't need someone who looks like him to see him."

Another pause. And now, Adam turns to look and Jake, and Jake has to work to make himself look back, because he's so scared.

Adam has his heart in the palm of his hand right now.

If he hurts him now, Jake will never recover.

"The reason I love you…" Adam says slowly, with conviction heavy in every word, "is that you take Lawrence's face away. I'm sick of having it here. I'm fucking sick of it, because it never becomes real. I'll never be able to touch him or talk to him or anything, ever again. And that face just… Underlines it."

Jake is awestruck for a few seconds. He knows that Adam is telling him the truth, he speaks these words from the bottom of his heart, and it's so far beyond what Jake thought he'd say that he can't even think of a reasonable answer.

But at last, he smiles and turns his eyes back to the TV. They're quiet for a few more minutes, Jake almost actually starts watching the show before Adam speaks up again.

"You know what I'm going to do tomorrow?"

"No?"

"Go to work," Adam says with a silly grin, and he seems to taste the words so cautiously that Jake actually laughs.

"I'm really proud of you, Adam."

Adam keeps his grin and looks down on his hands.

"Yeah."

Pause.

"I'm proud of me, too."

Jake smiles as well, and wishes he had the courage to look at Adam. After all, he very rarely gets to see the expression he knows is on Adam's face right now, with the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears, his gaze lowered, with a light blush on his cheeks. Like he's ashamed of being happy.

But maybe Jake will get to see that expression more often in the future.

Things will be okay now.

xxxxxxxxxxx

"Adam?"

Adam's eyelids flutter, even though it's reluctantly. Right now, he's trapped in a web of Jake's arms and Jake's warmth and Jake's breath on his neck, he's completely entwined, he can't breath and he can't break free and he doesn't want to break free.

For the first time in a long time.

But then, he recognizes the voice that just talked to him, and then, his eyes open abruptly.

Lawrence.

Lawrence is in his room.

Lawrence is in his room in a way he hasn't seen him in forever, hell, he's _never _seen Lawrence like this, because Lawrence walks up to his bed without a limp, both his feet are there, and he's alive and he's breathing and smiling and Adam's silly grin is back, it's back and it's bigger than ever before, his eyes are stinging and he has to do his best to keep his grin from disappearing when Lawrence sits down on the edge of the bed.

Yes. Adam wants to cry.

He wants to cry, because this isn't for real. Lawrence isn't here, Lawrence will never be here again, Lawrence is dead and he died way too quickly, but it doesn't matter.

As long as Adam gets to pretend these few seconds before Lawrence has to go again, it'll all be worth it.

Adam untangles from the maze of Jake's arms and sits up on his bed. Lawrence is sitting in front of him, and Adam can't even think of anything to say. Lawrence doesn't seem to mind, though. He's just smiling.

"Hey, man," Adam finally says, and Lawrence's smile gets wider.

"Hey. How are you doing?"

"Okay," Adam admits and nods to his own statement. "I mean, I miss you like crazy, but… I have someone new now."

Lawrence nods. Still smiling, it warms Adam up from the inside.

"I know. I'm very happy about that."

Adam nods, too. Though he doesn't really believe it. That's why he has to excuse himself now, he doesn't know if he'll get another chance.

"Listen," Adam says and tries to sound casual. "Oh, damn, I love you, I really do, but I can't…"

"Adam," Lawrence cuts him off.

His voice isn't soft in the same way as before. It's firm. So firm that Adam's voice can't even reach it.

"I love you, too," Lawrence says. "Very much. More than I ever loved Allison."

He pauses. Now, he almost looks sad.

"Just promise me that you'll let yourself be happy, okay?"

Adam nods without a trace of hesitation. Hell, his smile is even back.

"Don't worry," he says, almost casual now. "I will. It's not as scary as before to… Fall in love, you know. This thing can't end worse than our thing did, anyway."

Lawrence chuckles. But his face quickly grows serious, and now, Adam's eyes starts pricking again, as if he hasn't cried enough today, because this is coming to a close, he can feel that, and there won't be another time after that.

Lawrence won't come back.

Because he knows Adam can get by on his own now.

Lawrence brings his hand to Adam's cheek, his fingers wipe away tears Adam didn't even know he cried, and he looks firmly into Adam's eyes.

It tears Adam's very soul apart. But it's okay.

He's said those words. He's told Lawrence he's sorry.

And just by showing up here, Lawrence has told him it's okay.

"I have to go now, Adam."

Adam's first instinct is to beg. As he usually does.

Ask Lawrence not to go. _Beg _him not to go.

But he doesn't do that. He has someone else to comfort him as soon as Lawrence leaves, someone who catches the tears and allows Adam to drown his sorrow and his memories of Lawrence's face in his mouth.

So Adam just nods. And Lawrence's smile is gone, too, his eyes are shining with raw despair, but he doesn't shed a tear. In a melancholy way, he almost looks happy.

"I'm watching over you," Lawrence continues. "Every step of the way."

Pause.

"Now, go to sleep. I have one last thing I want to show you. My little Adam."

The last three words roll so sweetly off Lawrence's tongue.

And after that, it's like someone has given Adam a shot. He doesn't even stay awake long enough to see Lawrence fade away, just falls back into the mattress where darkness envelop him.

But he does manage to feel how Jake's arms close around him again before he falls asleep.

xxxxxxxxxxx

In Adam's dream, he's standing by the side of a road.

The air is crispy, the sky is like icy cotton hanging over his head. It's going to rain soon, Adam's sure of that.

He sees Lawrence standing a few feet away from him, tall and strong, in another way Adam's never seen him.

The wind blows back his hair, it flutters like a tiny lion's mane from the back of his head. Lawrence is wearing a long coat, the wind's got a hold on that, too. It blows like a flag around Lawrence's waist. Makes it look like he can fly.

Lawrence has his hands on his hips, his back straight, his expression sincere. Like he's trying to make a decision.

He's standing by a crossroad.

Adam's read somewhere that in the older days, people burned the bodies when a member of their family died, and then they put the ashes in an urn, and they placed the urn by a crossroad. So that the spirits of the dead one wouldn't find the way back home.

And Adam really hopes Lawrence will go.

He's been sticking around long enough to make sure Adam's okay.

And just when Adam thinks that, Lawrence starts walking. Slowly at first, almost insecurely, but then, he picks up speed, doesn't look back, doesn't look at Adam, which Adam's happy for.

He doesn't want Lawrence to see that he misses him already, that he always will, no Jake in the world can fix that, doesn't want Lawrence to see that he cries.

But Lawrence still seems so convinced that Adam's going to be okay now that he almost convinces Adam, too. Because he keeps walking, he walks and walks and walks until he's just an inch tall, and Adam can barely see him.

Then, he turns around and waves.

**TA-DAAH! Another completed fic! Ah, what a bittersweet feeling this is… Anyway, it's a damn completed fic now, so just… REVIEW! **


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